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| “ | You brats think it's okay to destroy municipal property? | „ |
| ~ The first pedophile tricking the young James Markum, David Boyle and Sean Devine by posing as a cop. |
The Pedophiles are the overarching antagonists of the 2003 neo-noir crime drama film Mystic River, based on Dennis Lehane's 2001 novel of the same name.
They are a pair of child molesters who, in 1975, kidnapped the young David "Dave" Boyle as he played with his friends Sean Devine and James "Jimmy" Markum at one of Charlestown, Boston's streets under false pretexts. The pedophiles then proceeded to rape and abuse Dave for a while at their hideout until he managed to escape, but the psychological scars that they left on the three friends persist until their adulthood.
The driver was portrayed by John Doman, who also played Don Morello in Mafia: The City of Lost Heaven, Paul Finnegan in Sniper 3, Caesar in Fallout: New Vegas, Rodrigo Borgia in Borgia, Carmine Falcone in Gotham, Jonah Vogelbaum in The Boys and Robert Silas in Law & Order: Organized Crime. The passenger was portrayed by an uncredited Paul Donlon.
History[]
One cloudy day at Charlestown, Boston in 1975, this pair of pedophiles came across three local kids named James "Jimmy" Markum, Sean Devine and David "Dave" Boyle upon seeing them trying to write their names in a patch of wet concrete after a short-lived street hockey game. As the passenger stayed in the car, the driver came out and posed as a cop, proceeding to chastise the kids for "vandalism" and asking them where they lived. Jimmy and Sean told him they lived nearby but Dave told him that he lived a few streets from there, so the driver demanded him to get into his car to take him home. An intimidated Dave allowed the driver to push him into the car, where the passenger creepily smiled at him. The two then left after the driver asked Jimmy and Sean to tell their mothers what they did.
Unknown to the kids, the men who took Dave had actually kidnapped him and didn't take Dave home as the driver said. The pedophiles took Dave to their hideout, where they proceeded to lock him up in the basement while his whereabouts were unknown to his family and neighbours. There, the pair sexually abused Dave for four days with no mercy, even though Dave asked them at least once to not molest him again to no avail. Somehow, Dave found a way out of their hideout and managed to make it back to his home, after which the news reported on his case.
Regardless of their fates, the actions of the pedophiles marked Jimmy, Sean and especially Dave for life well into their adulthood. While they all married and started families, Sean became a homicide detective distant to his wife, Jimmy became a widowed crook and Dave grew fearful of sexually abusing his own son, to the point he murdered a child molester one night in 2000 after going to the bar due to reminding him of the traumatic experience he endured. Unfortunately, this coincided with the murder of Jimmy's daughter Kate at the hands of Ray "Silent Ray" Harris Jr. and John O'Shea, leading Jimmy to mistake Dave for his daughter's killer, kill him and dump his body on the Mystic River. Upon being confronted by Sean about his actions, Jimmy admits that he sometimes wonders if the three of them actually got into the car that fateful day and the reality they live in is what their eleven years old selves imagine locked in a cellar.
Trivia[]
- In Dennis Lehane's original book, both of the pedophiles posed as cops. In Clint Eastwood's film adaptation, however, only the driver poses as a cop while the passenger poses as a priest. This change was implemented by Eastwood in reference to the molestation crisis in the Catholic Church at Boston around 2002, so he added it as a red herring for the audience, who could assume the film would be about the crisis before the plot proves otherwise. Eastwood dismissed the possibilities of complaints from the Catholic Church, assuring that the pedophile wasn't a priest but posing as one.