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| “ | I wanted Grant to know what it felt like, knowing he couldn't protect someone he loved. | „ |
| ~ Dwight explaining why he assaulted Catherine Harrison |
Dwight Talcott is the secondary antagonist of the Law & Order: Special Victims Unit episode "Reparations". He is a recovering drug addict who assaults the granddaughter of the man who raped his mother decades before.
He was portrayed by Vondie Curtis Hall, who also portrayed Miller in Die Hard 2.
Early life[]
Dwight was raised by his mother, Lorna, a civil rights activist. In 1964, when Dwight was six years old, he went door to door with his mother on a voter registration drive, when they were both kidnapped by a gang of Ku Klux Klan members, led by Grant Harrison. The men held Dwight at gunpoint and forced him to watch while they beat and gang-raped Lorna. The police declined to investigate the rape after Grant told them that Lorna was a prostitute that he and his fellow Klansmen paid for rough sex.
Dwight was profoundly traumatized by the attack, and as an adult became a drug addict and a petty thief, spending most of his adult life in and out of jail. Shortly before the events of the episode, however, he achieved sobriety, at the cost of having recurring nightmares about the attack.
He hired a private detective to find Grant so he could hold him to account for what he did to Lorna, and found out that he lived nearby, and that his adult granddaughter Catherine worked as a teacher at the grade school where he worked as a food vendor. He then decided to rape Catherine to make Grant feel the pain of failing to protect someone he loved.
"Reparations"[]
Dwight breaks into Catherine's apartment to rape her and jumps on top of her. He cannot bring himself to hurt a woman the way his mother had been hurt, however, so he gets off of her and leaves. A traumatized Catherine believes she has been raped, however, especially after Grant insists that a Black man must have done it. She tells Detectives Elliot Stabler and Fin Tutuola of the NYPD's Special Victims Unit that Dwight has been following her around at school and cursing her under his breath. Stabler and Tutuola arrest Dwight, who protests his innocence and hires his cousin, Los Angeles Deputy District Attorney Jonah Dekker, to defend him.
At Dwight's arraignment, he claims to have been with his mother at her church's canned food drive at the time of Catherine's assault, with Dekker offering the church's security video feed as evidence. Stabler and Tutuola examine the tape, however, and see Dwight going through a back door and not coming back until 53 minutes later, which would have given him plenty of time to assault Catherine. In court, Catherine testifies that Dwight raped her, and Grant verbally abuses Lorna, calling her a "dirty whore with a pervert for a son".
Suspecting that there is history between the two, Stabler and Tutuola investigate Grant and learn about the rape. Assistant District Attorney Casey Novak, who is prosecuting the case against Dwight, tells Dekker what Grant did to Lorna, and subpeonaes Lorna to testify about the rape, but Lorna refuses. Out of options, Novak appeals to Dwight to admit what he did to Catherine in order to expose Grant's crime, and Dwight agrees to plead guilty to rape.
At his sentencing hearing, however, Dwight changes his mind and refuses the plea. While he admits that he broke into Catherine's apartment and got on top of her, and apologizes for hurting her, he says that he did not rape her. Catherine then realizes that Grant manipulated her into believing that Dwight raped her. She is arrested for perjury, while Dwight agrees to plead guilty to breaking and entering, assault, and burglary, in return for a reduced sentence of 15 years to life in prison.
Trivia[]
- Dwight is inspired in part by the fictional character Tom Robinson from the 1960 novel To Kill A Mockingbird, who is framed for the rape of a white woman by the woman's racist father.
External links[]
- Dwight Talcott on the Law & Order Wiki
