<P> Morgan is shown over the series being flirtatious towards the team's technical analyst Penelope Garcia (Kirsten Vangsness). However, the relationship is platonic . He is shown to be confident and assertive, along with being very protective towards Spencer Reid (Matthew Gray Gubler), whom he helps to pick up girls . He is the muscle of the team, and usually storms in when a suspect requires apprehending physically . </P> <P> Morgan and his sisters Sarah and Desirée grew up on the South Side, in an unnamed notorious neighborhood of Chicago . He is the son of an African American father and white mother he has left he rarely speaks of his immediate family, he is close to his mother and sisters and returns every year for Fran's birthday . In season 2 it was stated that he was around age 33, putting his birth year around 1973 . He attended Northwestern University on a football scholarship, graduating cum laude . Although it was stated that he had earned a law degree, there has never been any mention of him practicing law . He was a star quarterback until a left knee injury ended his career . </P> <P> At the age of ten, Morgan was a witness to the shooting death of his father, also a police officer . Left without a father figure, he had behavioral problems as an adolescent and earned himself a juvenile record for fighting . He was taken under the wing of a local youth center coordinator, Carl Buford . Buford acted as a surrogate father to Morgan, helping expunge Morgan's juvenile criminal record and him to obtain the aforementioned football scholarship . Although Morgan was able to avoid going into a life of crime like many of his peers, Buford was also sexually abusing him, a fact which Morgan only admitted years later and under extreme duress . As a teen he discovered the body of an unidentified boy, which had a profound effect on him (he went door to door in order to collect money to buy the boy a headstone and visited the boy's grave every time he came home to Chicago). Due to his difficult past, he displays little sympathy for unremorseful criminals who attempt to use their traumatic childhood as an excuse for the crimes they commit . Prior to joining the FBI, Morgan served in a bomb squad and was a Chicago PD officer . At one time he spent 18 months doing deep undercover work . </P> <P> Years later, Morgan's past would come back to haunt him when he was arrested by the Chicago Police Department for the murder of the unidentified boy and two others . The lead detective, who had arrested Morgan several times for juvenile misdemeanors when the latter was young, believed Morgan was guilty and used a BAU profile done by Jason Gideon (Mandy Patinkin) to support his case . Believing he was being framed by the real killer, the BAU searched through Morgan's life and background to prove him innocent, which discomfited Garcia as Morgan had been generally reticent about the details of his past . They later identified Carl Buford as the man who set Morgan up to take the fall (Buford was friends with the lead detective). When Hotch asked about Buford, Morgan told him to back off . He then escaped police custody and spoke to a local boy who was friends with the latest victim . The boy revealed he was currently being molested by Buford and that the latest victim knew about it . Morgan confronted Buford, who at first denied anything happened between them, and told Morgan the other boy was lying . Refusing to back down (and wishing that he had told someone about Buford when he was a kid), Morgan eventually got Buford to admit to the abuse . Buford's admission was overheard by Chicago PD detectives who were lying in wait nearby, and they arrested Buford . Buford pleaded with Morgan to help him, to which Morgan replies, "You go to Hell," leaving the child molester to his fate . </P>

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