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| “ | You're lying! Why are you lying? You swore you wouldn't say anything! | „ |
| ~ Trenway yelling at one of his victims for telling on him |
Martin Trenway is the main antagonist of the Law & Order: Special Victims Unit episode "Recall". He is a prominent attorney who is secretly a serial rapist.
He is portrayed by Charles Shaughnessy, who also portrayed Dimitri Denatos in Mom's Got A Date With A Vampire, Victor Cassadine on General Hospital, and the Sheriff of Nottingham in Robin Hood and his Merry Mouse.
Early life[]
Trenway was born and raised in Queens, New York City, and began raping women as a teenager after his mother died. His first victim was Lorraine Delmas, his mother's best friend, whom he raped at knifepoint when he was 15. Out of loyalty to his mother, Delmas promised Trenway that she would not go to the police. Nevertheless, she was traumatized for the rest of her life as a result of what he did to her.
Trenway graduated from Duke University Law School and started working as an Assistant District Attorney in the Manhattan District Attorney's office, but eventually quit to open a lucrative practice as a personal injury lawyer in Ithica. He also married and fathered two sons.
He remained a sexual predator, raping dozens of women over a span of several years. His modus operandi was to blitz-attack women and knock them unconscious in secluded places like parking garages and empty lots, and then make them perform oral sex on him and rape them once they regained consciousness.
In "Recall"[]
While investigating rape victim Nikki West's case, Detectives Elliot Stabler and Dani Beck of the NYPD's Special Victims Unit find Trenway's fingerprints on her car, in which the rape took place. West says that she did not see her rapist's face, but she could identify a scar on his wrist. They question Trenway at his office and notice that his wrist is in a cast; he claims to have broken it playing basketball, but Beck is convinced he is using the cast to hide his telltale scar.
She and Stabler bring Trenway in for a suspect lineup, and West recognizes her rapist's scar on his wrist. Trenway protests his innocence, but Stabler and Beck have enough circumstantial evidence to arrest him. Trenway is released on bail, but the publicity from his arrest badly damages his reputation and career.
After seeing Trenway's picture in the newspaper, a woman named Heather Stark identifies him as the man who raped her five years earlier and presses charges against him, even though her rape kit is missing. When the rape kit is finally found, however, DNA analysis proves that Trenway did not rape Stark. The case against Trenway is dismissed, and he arrogantly tries to talk to her outside the courthouse before she tells him to go away.
Assistant District Attorney Casey Novak tells Stabler and Beck that she does not have enough evidence to convict Trenway of raping West, so they will need to find another of his victims to testify against him. Beck finds multiple unsolved rapes in Queens, North Carolina, and Ithica, New York that correspond to time periods when Trenway lived there, including Delmas' rape. Stabler, who had seen Delmas in the courtroom during Trenway's trial, goes with Beck to question Delmas, who refuses to talk about her rape. Beck bonds with Delmas by speaking French, Delmas' native language, and tells her about her husband's murder, assuring her that she felt much better after talking to someone about it. Delmas finally admits that Trenway raped her and agrees to testify against him at his trial for West's rape.
During the trial, Delmas tells the court what Trenway did to her, and offers as proof the clothes she was wearing the night of the rape. DNA analysis matches the semen on the clothes to that in West's rape kit, proving that he committed both rapes. While the statute of limitations for Delmas' case has long passed, the DNA evidence serves as proof of his guilt in West's, leaving him no choice but to plead guilty and name his other victims. Beck tells Delmas that when and if Trenway gets out of prison, he will be too old to rape anybody.
External links[]
- Martin Trenway on the Law & Order Wiki
