Abe Cheney is the main antagonist of the Law & Order: Special Victims Unit episode "Competence". He is a serial rapist who preys on women with special needs.
He was portrayed by Matt DeCaro.
History[]
Past[]
Cheney owns a chain of grocery stores and employs women with special needs to work for him.
Behind his public image, however, he was a sexual deviant who exploited the trust of the center to rape these women repeatedly, even impregnating some. None of his victims knew what sex was and to ensure that the public didn't know, he told the women that it was a form of exercise.
"Competence"[]
His actions are uncovered after his employee Katie Tolliver gets pregnant and she tells her mother and Detectives Olivia Benson and Elliot Stabler of the NYPD's Special Victims Unit about the "exercise" she performed with him.
Benson and Stabler arrest and interrogate him. He denies the allegations and refuses to take a DNA test, while having subpoenas served to Assistant District Attorney Alexandra Cabot and forensic psychiatrist George Huang, who both evaluated Katie, to make them testify that Katie is not competent to be heard as a witness. Ultimately, however, Katie is found competent to raise her child, meaning she can also testify against Cheney.
Benson and Stabler arrest Cheney for sexual misconduct, and Cabot shows him a petition for child support; she also says that she examined his financial records and found that he was paying for the children of several other women with special needs whom he raped, some of them underage, in order to buy their silence. She threatens to charge him with serial statutory rape unless he accepts a plea deal in which he serves 10 years in prison and forfeits all of his assets to support Katie and the other victims, as well as their children, for the rest of their lives. Cheney reluctantly accepts the deal and is imprisoned.
| “ | I try to help Katie, and this is the thanks I get? | „ |
| ~ Cheney complaining about his arrest. |