Richard Witt is an ordained minister holding a private anonymous support group under the name of Our Church of the Holy Savior, specifically for men afraid of being inherent sex offenders due to biological relatives before them committing such offenses and "passing on the rape gene".
History[]
Witt's group was infiltrated when it attracted the attention of police after member Nick Brown raped a woman named Jessica Walcott. Brown swiftly confessed and was willing to give up another member of the group, Sam Dalton, as "The River Rapist", a serial rapist at large. Brown went to the group with a wire, where Witt was holding another session of open discussion. When Dalton came back after a date, Brown tried to get Dalton to confess to the rapes. When member Chris Perry pulled a knife to shut brown up and then found his wire, the group was raided and Dalton was arrested. Dalton was placed on trial due to matching evidence, but the first round was challenged that Dalton's confession should be religiously exempted because Witt was ordained by the Third Avenue Baptist Church, thus making his statements under a makeshift confessional. The motion won, and all evidence from brown's sellout onward was excluded.
When member Will Stein, the only member who wasn't a criminal, was ready to testify against Dalton because he bragged to Will's face outside of the group, which made the confession admissible, the trial was reinitiated for a second attempt at convicting Dalton. After all the women Dalton raped testified, Will was called. When he went missing, a recess was called to search for him. Witt revealed he coerced Will to not testify to preserve the group, and that he had no idea where Will went. Will was on the edge of a rooftop, ready to commit suicide from a fall, but Benson mentioned her biological father to encourage Will to save himself and come back to testify. His testimony was crucially successful for Dalton's conviction. Witt's group was presumably disbanded as a result of the case, his legal status being left unknown. (SVU: "Genes")