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Adam Styler is a major antagonist of the novel Sleepers and its 1996 film adaptation. He is one of four guards at a juvenile detention facility who physically and sexually abuse the boys in their charge.
In the film, he is portrayed by Lennie Loftin.
Overview[]
Styler is a guard at the Wilkinson's Home For Boys, a detention center for juvenile delinquents, alongside Sean Nokes, Ralph Ferguson, and Henry Addison. He and the other guards regularly abuse the boys they are paid to look after, and taking sadistic pleasure in beating and raping children who cannot fight back. He and the other guards reserve particular cruelty for the four newest adolescent inmates - John O'Reilly, Michael Sullivan, Tommy Marcano, and Lorenzo "Shakes" Carcaterra.
In Sleepers[]
Styler is first seen with the other guards, ganging up on the boys. Nokes leads the others in beating and sexually abusing the boys (offscreen), a practice that goes on regularly for the next 18 months. At one point, Styler sodomizes Michael with his baton while ordering him to sing a hymn, while the other guards watch and laugh.
During a football game between the guards and the inmates, John and Michael lead their fellow prisoners in defeating their tormentors, with help from Rizzo, the only Black inmate. Styler and the other guards are enraged, however, and beat and torture Rizzo to death, with Styler dealing out the worst physical punishment.
The night before the boys are to be released, Styler and the other guards inflict one last round of rape and torture, with Styler picking Tommy as his personal whipping boy.
Years later, Styler joins the NYPD as a narcotics detective, but soon starts working as muscle for the very drug dealers he investigates. He also works as a hitman, killing the dealers' competition.
In 1981, John and Tommy, now career criminals, murder Nokes. Michael, an assistant district attorney, and Shakes, now a reporter, hatch a scheme to expose the crimes committed in Wilkinsons' by staging a rigged prosecution. Michael calls Ferguson as a character witness for Nokes, and allows defense attorney Danny Snyder, who is in on the scheme, to reveal that Nokes led the other guards in the physical and sexual abuse of children. Soon afterward, thanks to Shakes' skills as a journalist, Styler's complicity in the abuse is revealed, along with his long history of police corruption. He is then arrested for murder and child sexual abuse.
The story's epilogue reveals that Styler tries to hang himself in prison. He survives, but is left paralyzed for the rest of his life.
Trivia[]
- Lorenzo Carcaterra, the author of the book the film is based on, maintains that it is a completely true story and that Adam Styler is a pseudonym for a real person, but the person's real identity has been kept secret by the judicial system.
External links[]
- Adam Styler on the Near Pure Evil Wiki