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| “ | She started to cry, like being with me was so awful. I told her I'd tell Tommy, so she laid down, but then she changed her mind. Girls can't do that! | „ |
| ~ Nick rationalizing having raped Cynthia Wilmott |
Nick Radsen is the main antagonist of the Law & Order: Special Victims Unit episode "Popular". He is a high school student who rapes Cynthia Wilmott, a classmate who dates his best friend Tommy Kessler, after Tommy "gives" her to him for his birthday.
He was portrayed by Jason Fuchs.
Early life[]
Nick and his best friend, Tommy Kessler, are 15-year-old high school students who throw parties in which their female classmates perform oral sex on the boys in return for beer and drugs, usually supplied by Tommy's older sister, Mia. Nick is infatuated with Tommy's 14-year-old girlfriend, Cynthia Wilmont, but she ignores him because he is shy and socially awkward; the other girls at the parties and in his grade ignore him, as well. His obsession and sexual frustration grow evermore intense as he watches Tommy order Cynthia to perform oral sex on other boys and she goes along with it, desperate to belong to the school's popular clique.
Tommy throws Nick a party for his birthday, during which he tells Cynthia to have sex with Nick, who is a virgin, as a "present" to his friend. Cynthia reluctantly goes into an empty bedroom with Nick, who is sweet and polite to her at first, but soon becomes aggressive. She changes her mind about having sex with Nick, who becomes angry and threatens to tell Tommy to break up with her unless she submits. When she freezes up, he rapes her and leaves her crying on the bed.
"Popular"[]
Soon after the party, Nick is diagnosed with gonorrhea and realizes that he got it from Cynthia. Enraged, he follows her home from school after his baseball team practices and pushes her down a flight of subway stairs, breaking her arm.
Detectives Olivia Benson and Elliot Stabler investigate Cynthia's sexual abuse after the girl reports the rape to an emergency room nurse who happens to be a friend of Stabler's wife. Their SVU colleagues Detectives John Munch and Fin Tutuola talk to Nick and Tommy, who reluctantly tell them about the sex parties after the detectives threaten to go to their parents and say that Cynthia offered to get beer from an older man who was hanging out at the party.
Benson and Stabler talk to Mia, who tells them about Ross MacKenzie, a substitute teacher who attends the parties as a "chaperone" so he can prey on the girls there. To protect Tommy, Cynthia tells them that McKenzie raped her. They arrest MacKenzie, but the DNA sample they compel from him does not match Cynthia's rape kit. MacKenzie then says that he had tried to persuade Nick and Tommy to let him have sex with Cynthia in return for drugs, but she refused, so he left her with them, meaning that one of them must be the rapist.
Benson and Stabler interrogate Nick, with his mother present. Nick tells Benson and Stabler that he has always had feelings for Cynthia and is disgusted with the way Tommy treats her. Stabler tries to get under his skin by taunting him about Tommy giving him his "leftovers", while Benson plays the "good cop" by pretending to sympathize with him about his unrequited feelings for Cynthia. Nick then says that Cynthia "let him do it" even though she said no, and that he beat her up because he was angry about getting gonorrhea from her. As Nick's horrified mother looks on, Benson and Stabler arrest him for rape and assault, while Tommy is arrested for sexual abuse and pimping; both are incarcerated in a juvenile facility.
External links[]
- Nick Radsen on the Law & Order Wiki
