Warning for sexual assault.
Tegan Armin Lundberg (34) has been an important person for the Nordhoff family since is the prosecution lawyer for Mary’s sister. Mary considers him like a cool older brother seeing that he has guided her and her sister a lot during this difficult time. Tegan is sided with the prosecution team alongside the prosecution lawyer for Ainsley. Like his younger cousin Maddie, he hates losing. Although Maddie is 19 years younger than him and her main passion is soccer, the point still stays. He legally can’t disclose case information to those outside the case and he’s not forcing Maddie or anyone in the family to feel like they must watch it given its sensitive nature. He supports his family and would do anything to protect them. He’s openly asexual and very feminist. Tegan had been interested in court shows ever since he was 12 and he’s always been most fascinated with the prosecution side. Prosecution is a harder side than it looks however and Tegan knows this. Defendants are innocent until proven guilty so it’s the prosecution’s job to prove that person guilty and a lot of horrid criminals walk free due to trials where the prosecution didn’t do enough or completely botched it. Tegan’s always noted what a prosecution side could have done to win a case when they failed and also how they won it for their case when they succeeded. He still does this and has become much better at it since becoming an actual prosecution lawyer. Since being a prosecution lawyer, he’s also become closer with the police department (except for an unrelated time where he did win a case to prosecute a corrupt cop) and the police have helped discover evidence that would help him. He’s also a great friend of Ainsley’s lawyer as well, the two have settled a few cases together before and even call each other “partners-against-crime”.
Even if he didn’t have the harrowing evidence brought by Ainsley and Mary‘s sister, he’d still believe them. Tegan didn’t know either woman or their families prior to taking on the case but he’s discussed it with them and kept a patient and thoughtful approach knowing the subject is heartbreaking to talk about. Tegan himself is a sexual assault survivor. He’s been assaulted at 15 by a 16-year-old classmate of his who did so after prom as “punishment” for him not taking her to prom. People didn’t believe him and people blamed him accusing him of “leading her on and asking for it” and some asked why he didn’t just “agree to go to prom with her”. She pled guilty to what she did because she knew she would get off lighter as a juvenile and for pleading guilty but Tegan doesn’t forgive her, even if she did have to register as a sex offender. Ultimately he knows he feels that by being sexually assaulted that he was punished too even though he didn’t deserve it. He wants to approach this case and not treat any form of evidence lightly and defend his clients in such an honest way that the defence will question why they need to continue defending despite the hardcore evidence. Deep down Tegan wonders if the defence truly believes the assailant is innocent and is grateful he’s never been in a case where he had to prosecute someone he believed was innocent. He does have a good idea of a person’s morale by facial and body language and he knows Mary’s sister isn’t lying to him…but he’s certain the assailant will.
Maddie was created by @babynamesfactory.