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| “ | It's getting harder not to touch... | „ |
| ~ Eric confessing to having pedophilic urges toward his five-year-old stepbrother. |
Eric Byers is the secondary antagonist of the Law & Order: Special Victims Unit episode "Confession". He is a teenage pedophile who confesses to Detective Olivia Benson of the NYPD's Special Victims Unit that he is having sexual urges toward his five-year-old stepbrother, Corey.
He was portrayed by Marshall Allman.
Biography[]
Early life[]
Byers is a socially inept, friendless teenage boy who lives with his mother, Dana, his stepfather, Sean Kelley, and his five-year-old stepbrother, Corey.
Soon after his mother remarried, Eric discovered that he was sexually attracted to little boys and began having intense sexual feelings for Corey. Terrified and guilt-ridden over his desires, he began drinking heavily, which worsened his already rocky relationship with his mother and stepfather.
He went online searching for other people who were attracted to children but unwilling to act on their feelings, and found the website Pediaphax, which featured suggestive, but non-pornographic, images of children for pedophiles to use to relieve their sexual urges without breaking the law. He emailed the website's founder and webmaster, Jake Berlin, asking for help in managing his pedophilic urges. Berlin, who claimed to have never molested a child, assured him that he too could be a "virtuous pedophile", and emailed him suggestive pictures of little boys.
"Confession"[]
Eventually, Eric's urges become so overpowering that he fears he will hurt Corey, so he goes to the station house of NYPD's Special Victims Unit and tells Detective Olivia Benson about his desires. He tells her that he knows that child molestation is wrong and asks her to put him in a therapy program for pedophiles, but Benson says that such programs are only available for pedophiles who have been convicted of sexually abusing children. While the detectives at SVU are concerned that Eric will eventually act on his urges, all they can do is monitor his behavior.
Benson talks to Dana, who is so horrified and disgusted to learn of Eric's pedophilia that she kicks him out of her house. Meanwhile, Benson and her partner, Detective Elliot Stabler, interview Berlin, who tells them that Eric had posted on Pediaphax, and that he had warned the boy that he would contact the police if any of the site's users sexually abused children.
Benson and Stabler try to watch Eric to make sure he does not harm any children, but he manages to give them the slip. Eventually. however, they find out that he has been staying at a motel. They and Dana arrive there to find Eric has been murdered, someone having brutally sodomized him and cut his throat. As she cradles her son's dead body, Dana sobs that she loved him, but that she is glad he is dead.
Benson and Stabler then find that Eric had given in to his urges by raping a little boy, and that he had bragged about it on Pediaphax. They discover that Sean, believing Eric had raped Corey, sodomized him with a baseball bat to "give him a taste of his own medicine", and moments later Berlin slit Eric's throat because he was jealous that Eric had actually done what he could only fantasize about. Berlin and Kelley go to prison, but the identity of Eric's victim is never discovered.
External links[]
- Eric Byers on the Law & Order Wiki
