User blog:AustinDR/PE Proposal: Old Nick

https://villains.fandom.com/f/p/3179493162221867260

Surprised this was removed, but here we go: Room is a 2010 novel by Emma Donoghue that was later adapted into a film. The book is about a young woman who lives in the titular room with her son. Ma - or Joy Newsome - hadn't gone outside ever since she was first kidnapped by an unnamed man named Old Nick - which is one of the Devil's many aliases. He lured her into an eleven foot room by pretending that there was something wrong with his pet dog.

What has he done?
Jack at best believes that Old Nick would talk personally with his mother each night. But speaking is not what he wants. It is revealed that Old Nick had frequently raped Joy every night, culminating in her being pregnant at some point. She was initially going to have a child prior to Jack, but it died. Afterward, Jack is born.

One day, Joy has Jack pretend that he had died, and one of the first thoughts that pops in Old Nick's mind is to bury Jack at the backyard. He does listen to Joy's suggestions, and he places Jack's body in the trunk of his truck. Though of course, Old Nick is fooled and both Joy and Jack escape. Old Nick is found guilty of kidnapping and rape, and is sentenced to 25 years of prison.

Heinousness
Rape by itself wouldn't be an automatic qualifier for a PE villain, especially if it happened to one victim, but Old Nick has multiple instances of raping Joy continuously which pushes him well over the moral event horizon. Aside from that, he's holding her and her son hostage for his own purposes.

Freudian excuse? Mitigating factors?
None for excuses. As for mitigating factors...I feel that how Old Nick's page describes him is deliberately misleading. It's made clear that Old Nick doesn't give two craps about Joy nor what she thought. He only values her for sex. While he does listen to Joy's suggestion of where Jack should be buried, he's clearly not doing it out of care for Joy's choice, but because he merely wanted to get rid of the evidence as soon as possible.