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| “ | You're crying now, but one day you'll realize that this is the best sex you've ever had. | „ |
| ~ Purcell to Avery Jordan after raping her |
Richard Purcell is the main antagonist of the Special Victims Unit episode "Legitimate Rape". He is a sports cameraman who stalks and rapes reporter Avery Jordan, getting her pregnant, and then tries to take custody of her unborn child.
He was portrayed by David Marciano.
Early life[]
Purcell went to law school, but he did not become a lawyer because he never passed the bar exam. Instead, he got a job as a cameraman for Sports and Events Network, and he often worked with star reporter Avery Jordan.
While Avery considered their relationship strictly professional, Purcell was obsessed with her and spent a year stalking her after work, installing hidden cameras in her apartment to take pictures of her without her knowledge and spy on her while she had sex with her boyfriend, Jason Hollis. When she offhandedly mentioned to him that she would like to have a child someday, he decided that he would be the father, whether she wanted it or not. To set his plan into motion, he anonymously mailed Hollis, who was married, a recording of him having sex with Avery, effectively blackmailing him into breaking off the affair.
"Legitimate Rape"[]
After covering an NFL game with Avery, Purcell offers to drive her to her apartment and help move her equipment inside. After he does do, he pretends to leave, but he is in fact hides in the kitchen while she goes into the bathroom. Believing he has gone, Avery takes a shower, only for him to suddenly get in with her, overpower her, and rape her. After he is done, he leaves her crying on the floor and tells her that she will one day realize that he "gave her" the best sex of her life.
Avery does not immediately report the rape because she fears that doing so will damage her career. After six weeks have passed, she tells Detective Olivia Benson of the NYPD's Special Victims Unit that she was raped by a coworker, but she does not mention his name. Unbeknownst to her, Purcell is spying on them and taking pictures. He slips the photos under her door just before she gets home, along with a note reading, "Watching you."
Frightened, Avery goes to the SVU station house and discloses to Benson and her partner, Detective Nick Amaro, that Purcell raped her and is stalking her. The detectives send her to get a medical exam to check her for STDs and gather DNA evidence against Purcell.
Detectives Fin Tutuola and Amanda Rollins question Purcell, who claims to have had consensual sex with Avery and says that she is only saying that he raped her because she doesn't want her relationship with Hollis becoming public knowledge. Fin and Rollins talk to Hollis, who says that Purcell is blackmailing him with the recording of him having sex with Avery.
Benson and Assistant District Attorney Rafael Barba convince Avery to press charges against Purcell, and he is arrested for rape and stalking and imprisoned until his trial. Avery, meanwhile, finds out that she is pregnant with Purcell's child. While she is horrified to have been impregnated through rape and hates Purcell for what he did to her, she decides to keep the child.
Months later, Purcell fires his lawyer and decides to represent himself. He proves himself to be a terrible attorney, earning several stern warnings from the judge for such behavior as insinuating that Avery was "with him" because Hollis is a bad lover and asking Benson if she does her job because she hates men. He then calls an expert witness - Fritz Showalter, a congressman and quack doctor who presents his widely debunked theory that it is impossible for a woman to become pregnant from a "legitimate rape". Fortunately, Barba is able to discredit Showalter by revealing his history of inappropriate behavior with female patients.
Purcell's next witness is a heavily pregnant Avery, and he uses his cross-examination to terrorize her, repeatedly insinuating that she wanted him to father her child.
The jury finds Purcell guilty of stalking but innocent of rape, the majority of jurors having compromised with one who believed Showalter's "legitimate rape" theory. Even while finding him guilty of stalking, however, they sentence him to time served, effectively allowing him to get away with his crimes. Avery is so upset by the verdict that she goes into premature labor and gives birth to a son, Theo.
Wasting no time, Purcell sues Avery for custody of the child and takes her to family court, where he once again represents himself, while Avery is represented by Benson and Barba's mutual friend, Rita Calhoun. Purcell again uses his cross-examination to bully Avery, who is seeing a psychiatrist and taking antidepressants to cope with the trauma of what he did to her, calling her an unfit mother and demanding custody of "his child". Calhoun brings up his history of stalking and brutalizing Avery, which results in the judge awarding Avery full custody of Theo to Avery; however, the judge legally has no choice but to allow Purcell to have supervised visits with the boy.
Refusing to have Purcell in her or Theo's life, Avery decides to flee the country, over Benson and Calhoun's objections. When Purcell shows up at the SVU station house demanding to know where Avery and Theo are, however, Benson and Captain Donald Cragen lie that they are at a doctor's appointment, while Tutuola puts him in a conference room to keep him busy. When a skeptical Amaro asaks Benson what is going on, she replies that Avery took Theo on a private plane to a non-extradition country where Purcell will never find them. As with the rest of the SVU team, Amaro tacitly agrees to go along with the ruse to keep Avery and Theo safe.
External links[]
- Richard Purcell on the Law & Order Wiki
