Michael Strickland

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“	Anthony didn't do anything he didn't want to do.	„
	~ Strickland rationalizing having pimped out Anthony Reed

Michael Strickland is the main antagonist of the Law & Order: Special Victims Unit episode "Master Key". He is a social worker who sells the children he supposedly advocates for into sexual slavery.

He was portrayed by Zach Appelman.

Early life[]

Strickland is a social worker with New York City's Department of Child Protective Services, and for much of his career he was lauded by his superiors for going above and beyond the requirements of his job to help the exploited and at-risk children he advocated for, particularly teenage boys. A few complaints were made against him by the families of said boys, however, claiming that he spent too much time with them; there were rumors that he had an unwholesome interest in them, although no one could prove anything.

Those rumors were true - Strickland was in fact a pimp and a child trafficker who used his job as a cover for grooming the boys and selling them into prostitution. Teenage orphan Anthony Reed, whom Strickland began representing when he was 11 years old, was one of his "top earners", with Strickland pimping him out from the group home he had placed him in. The abuse takes a heavy toll on Anthony, who begins acting out violently and is eventually arrested for assault on put on probation.

Shortly before the events of the episode, Strickland forced Anthony to visit a man named Colin Clark, who had contacted him over Craigslist offering to pay to have sex with the boy. Unbeknownst to Strickland, however, Clark was in fact a good samaritan who wanted to help Anthony escape his grasp. When he tracks Michael's ankle monitor, a condition of his probation, he sees that Michael has taken it off and figured out that Clark was trying to help Anthony escape. Strickland tracked him and Anthony down to a cheap motel, beat Clark to the floor, and forced Anthony to point a gun at him; when Anthony couldn't bring himself to kill Clark, Strickland grabbed his hand and forced him to pull the trigger, shooting Clark in the head and killing him.

"Master Key"[]

When Anthony is reported missing from his group home, Detectives Terry Bruno and Kate Silva of the NYPD's Special Victims Unit investigate, tracking Anthony's ankle monitor to a nearby diner, where they find it abandoned on the bathroom. They trace Clark and Anthony to the motel, where they find a traumatized Anthony standing over Clark's corpse.

Fearing what Strickland will do to him if he tells the truth, Anthony claims that Clark kidnapped and tried to rape him, and that she shot Clark in self-defense. Strickland supports Anthony's story, calling him "a good kid" whose abuse history made him vulnerable to sexual predators.

When Bruno and Silva investigate further, however, they find security camera footage of Anthony getting into Clark's car willingly, while forensic evidence reveals that Clark had been shot while in a kneeling posture, contradicting Anthony's statement that he had shot Clark while the latter was standing, that the body had been moved postmortem, and that there is a partial, unidentified fingerprint on the gun. Eventually, the detectives discover that this second fingerprint belongs to Strickland.

When SVU Captain Olivia Benson has Strickland brought to the SVU station house for questioning, he claims that Anthony called him from the motel begging for help, and when he got there, he found Clark and Anthony in bed together. He then says that he confronted Clark, who pulled a gun, and a struggle ensued between him, Clark, and Anthony in which the gun accidentally went off. Neither Benson nor Assistant District Attorney Dominick Carisi Jr. believe him, but they do not have enough evidence to prove that he, not Anthony, killed Clark. Anthony, meanwhile, refuses to say what exactly happened that night, fearing that people will believe he is less of a man if it becomes known that Strickland pimped him out.

Benson, Bruno, Silva, and Sergeant Fin Tutuola investigate further and find several numbers with different area codes in Anthony's phone. They eventually connect the phone numbers to men who responded to a Craigslist ad for Anthony's "services". Benson deduces that Strickland has pimped out dozens of children in his care, and tells Anthony that, by telling her the truth about Strickland, he can help her make sure that he never hurts anyone else. This strikes a chord in Anthony, who finally admits that Strickland had been pimping him since he was 11, and that he made him shoot Clark, who was only trying to help him. This statement allows Carisi to get a search warrant that yields several communications between Strickland and online johns that include naked pictures of the children he sold.

Benson has Strickland arrested in front of his stunned colleagues, and Bruno and Silva interrogate him. Strickland dismisses Anthony as a pathological liar, but when the detectives confront him with the evidence, he reluctantly confesses to trafficking the children, even though he insists that they "didn't do anything they didn't want to do". Siri ckland then pleads guilty to murder, child sex trafficking, kidnapping, and unlawful imprisonment, and is presumably imprisoned for life.

External links[]

Michael Strickland on the Law & Order Wiki

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Villains

Exiled: A Law & Order Movie
Gianni Uzielli