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| “ | I only sleep with whores. They ask for it, so I give it to them. | „ |
| ~ Peter dismissing the women he infected. |
Peter Butler is the main antagonist of the Law & Order: Special Victims Unit episode "Quickie". He is a misogynistic stockbroker who deliberately infects women with HIV out of a desire to avenge himself on his absent mother.
He was portrayed by Brian Geraghty.
Biography[]
When Peter was three years old, he and his mother were victims of severe physical abuse at the hands of his mother's violent boyfriend. Peter's mother eventually snapped and killed her boyfriend to protect Peter, leaving him to be raised by his grandfather Dewey while she was imprisoned for the rest of her life. Dewey didn't want Peter to grow up blaming himself for what happened, so he told Peter his mother abandoned him when he was born; however, this resulted in Peter growing up to hate women, viewing all of them as worthless trash who didn't care about anyone but themselves. As an adult he became a stockbroker and had regular anonymous sex with sex workers and random women he met online. He would go out of his way to degrade and insult his partners during sex, slapping and spanking them and yelling misogynistic abuse at them during the act.
Peter's hatred of women only intensified when he contracted HIV from a prostitute. He continued his sexual exploits afterwards, having sex with a different woman every night and never using protection with the intention of spreading HIV to as many women as possible. By the time of the episode, he had exposed hundreds of women to the virus.
"Quickie"[]
One of Peter's sexual partners, Anna McWilliams, is murdered a few minutes after hooking up with him. Detectives Elliot Stabler and Olivia Benson of the NYPD's Special Victims Unit come to suspect Peter after finding out that he hooked up with Anna that night under the online moniker "Big Peter". Peter is arrested by Benson and Detective Fin Tutuola after Benson lures him out by offering to hook up with him, and spends his time in custody bragging about sleeping with thousands of women and making sexual remarks about Benson. The SVU's suspicions only intensify when they discover that Rebecca Ellison, another woman who hooked up with Peter, was raped with a similar M.O. to Anna's murder two years previously. However, Peter is soon cleared as his fingerprints and DNA are not a match to either case. It is later found that Anna was murdered by her ex-boyfriend Henry Christensen after he saw her having sex with Peter.
However, after Peter is released medical examiner Melinda Warner completes the testing on Anna's body and discovers that the semen inside her, which came from Peter, is HIV positive. Benson and Stabler go to his house to warn him that he has HIV, only for Peter to reply that he knows and has unprotected sex anyway; horrified, Benson and Stabler arrest him for attempted murder. Unable to charge him without a complaining witness, Benson talks to Rebecca Ellison and confirms that she has AIDS as a result of HIV. Genetic testing then confirms that she has the same strain as Peter, allowing him to be charged.
Awaiting trial, Peter is confronted in his cell by Benson, who needles him about his history with women until he spits in her face in an attempt to infect her. When Benson tells him that his hatred will be inside him until the day he dies, Peter smugly replies that part of him will be inside the women he infected until the day they die. Meanwhile, Dewey, appalled by Peter's crimes, hacks into his online profile and publicizes his HIV status before leaking the story to the media, leading to eleven more women he infected coming forward.
At Peter's arraignment, the judge overrules an attempt by his attorney, Lionel Granger, to have the evidence of his HIV strain suppressed before ordering the case to go to trial. However, as Peter leaves the courtroom he is confronted by Rebecca, who sprays hydrochloric acid in his face and tells him that he now looks like the monster he is. The attack leaves Peter blind in one eye and suspends the case against him until he is well enough to proceed. He is later shown in the audience at Rebecca's trial as she is cross-examined.
During the trial, Dewey tries to find a way to testify against Peter which leads Benson to realize that he was the one who leaked Peter's HIV status to the media. When Benson and Stabler confront Peter with this fact, a devastated Peter implores Dewey to tell him why he betrayed him, and Dewey replies that he wanted to atone for his role in making Peter who he is; he then reveals the truth about Peter's mother, and that he has taken a fatal overdose of sleeping pills. As Dewey dies, he tells Peter it's not too late for him to become a decent human being. Horrified and guilt-ridden, Peter agrees to plead guilty to attempted murder and drops the charges against Rebecca.
External links[]
- Peter Butler (Special Victims Unit) on the Law & Order Wiki
