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| “ | What I did with my girls wasn't dirty, Detective. It was beautiful. | „ |
| ~ Matthews rationalizing the sexual abuse he inflicts. |
Richard Matthews is the main antagonist of the Law & Order: Special Victims Unit episode "Exchange". He is a host parent who rapes the teenage girls who stay in his house as exchange students, and then brainwashes them into believing that their own parents abused them.
He was portrayed by Darren Goldstein.
Biography[]
Matthews and his wife, Mary, are host parents who take teenage girls from other countries into their home as exchange students. Once he has gained their trust, he drugs and rapes the girls, and takes advantage of their blurry memories of the assaults to manipulate them into believing that they were abused by their parents. He takes special pleasure in making his wife Mary watch as he rapes the girls, laughing about "the old bitch" watching him "break in the new ones". He also records the rapes to relive the memory later.
He decided to make his latest victims, Italian sisters Emilia and Lara Barassi, his permanent "guests" by convincing them to testify in court that their father molested them, putting him in prison and allowing Matthews to take custody of them. He continued abusing them, with Mary, who feared being left on her own if her husband went to prison, serving as his reluctant accomplice.
"Exchange"[]
When Emilia is raped by cab driver Oscar Groves while coming home drunk from a party, the NYPD's Special Victims Unit investigates her case. They quickly arrest Groves, but Captain Olivia Benson sees that Emilia exhibits classic symptoms of being sexually abused as a child, and suspects that she has been abused for years.
Detectives Amanda Rollins, Fin Tutuola and Dominick Carisi Jr. question Emilia and Lara and uncover their abuse histories, but become suspicious when they both give the exact same account of the abuse, word for word, that they gave at their father's trial; they believe that the girls were coached by their real abuser.
Benson questions Lara again about the abuse, asking her how she was sure that her father abused her and her sister. Under Benson's gentle prodding, Lara eventually admits that Matthews "showed her" what her father had supposedly done "with his fingers". She insists that Matthews loves her and Emilia and could not have hurt them, but soon realizes that he tricked them into sending their father to prison, and attempts suicide by overdosing on pills. Fortunately, she is resuscitated in time.
Tutuola and Carisi go to Matthews' apartment to arrest him, and discover one of the videos he made of raping Emilia and Lara. Matthews insists that what he did to the girls was not rape, but a "beautiful" act of love, and dismisses his wife as having "had her day". When Carisi asks Matthews how old he was when he was abused, he says nothing, but appears shaken. Tutuola and Carisi move to arrest Matthews, who panics and jumps to his death off of his balcony. Mary testifies about what Matthews did in return for being spared prison, while Lara and Emilia's father is exonerated and takes back custody of his daughters.
External links[]
- Richard Matthews on the Law & Order Wiki
