Written By Kevin Fox and Brianna Yellen
Directed By Michael Pressman
A teenage girl (Haley Lu Richardson) comes to after having entered a pizzeria bathroom while drugged and makes a rape accusation against a employee with a criminal record. When little evidence against the employee is found, however, the girl's father (Jamie McShane) takes matters into his own hands. A pending NYPD lawsuit only complicates matters, especially when the girl's father's vigilante justice makes SVU's job even harder.
Tropes
- Accidental Murder: Jenna's father kidnaps and tortures Jerome to try to force a rape confession from him. This results in triggering a massive asthma attack in Jerome that puts him into cardiac arrest. Neither the the father nor the paramedics can revive him.
- Ambiguously Evil: Jerome, the guy who Jenna wrongly identifies as her rapist and who is killed by her father as a result. While he's definitely innocent of this particular rape, he was apparently one of the "Prospect Park Three" who were arrested for gang-rape but got off due to issues with the DNA evidence and are now suing the NYPD. Amaro insists that the Prospect Park Three were guilty, but Benson isn't so sure. The viewer is never given an answer, so it's possible that Jerome really was a rapist and was just innocent of this particular crime.
- Creepy Uncle: Neil Alexander, Jenna's uncle, was the one who really raped her (and countless others).
- Downer Ending: As Amaro points out, the family is ruined for at least the foreseeable future: the father will be sent to jail for at least three years and be forced to live with having killed an innocent man; the mother is left an emotional wreck by her brother's evil actions and her husband's incarceration; and Jenna will be left forever scarred by both her rape and her indirect role in Jerome's death. Later, Barba talks to Jerome's angry mother and grandmother, telling them that their son/grandson's killer will very likely get off easy because of the circumstances behind Jerome's death and the rape. The closest thing to a "Ray of Hope" Ending is that the uncle, who raped his niece and framed Jerome, will still get significant jail time (and most likely a life sentence at that if more victims come forward). But Jerome still died as collateral damage, and it's very likely that in addition to the lawsuit Jerome and his friends already had pending against the NYPD, the Jones family will file a wrongful death suit considering that Jerome would had his name cleared very quickly had SVU checked the security tape at the pizzeria before bringing him in.
- Evil Uncle: Jenna's uncle Neil, who is the one who persuades her father to beat a confession out of her accused rapist, and is later revealed as a Serial Rapist and the one who really assaulted her.
- Faux Affably Evil: Neil behaves like a reasonable supportive, protective figure to Jenna, even during the meeting where she extorts money from him (while wearing a wire, as a ruse to draw a confession). But then she suggests he made her pregnant and apparently this is a Berserk Button for him, as he grabs her by the arm, yanks her back to the table, and starts snapping at her.
Finn: You know what? I've never met a bad man that wasn't afraid of a baby.
- Groin Attack: Jerome insists on his innocence, even after taking several shots from the nail gun, but then Jenna's dad puts the nail gun to his crotch and he sings like a canary.
- Halfway Plot Switch: Zigzagged. With Jerome's death the issue seems to have switched from rape to vigilantism and its racial justice implications - Benson even says they don't need to bother rushing the dna test on the rapist's semen any more - but then the issue zags back to busting Jenna's rapist and Jerome is sidelined until the final scene of the episode.
- Jack Bauer Interrogation Technique: Deconstructed. Turns out, torturing a man you suspect of having committed a crime into confessing can have serious repercussions, especially if he ends up dead by your actions.
- Nice Job Breaking It, Hero:
- Jerome would still be alive had SVU checked the security camera at the pizzeria before they arrested him.
- Neil almost gets away with the rape even after Jenna remembers what really happened because a trauma counsellor convinces her she was remembering things wrong.
- Noodle Incident: The case of the "Prospect Park Three", three black teenagers who were arrested for gang-rape, got off due to unspecified issues with the case and are now suing the NYPD for wrongful arrest. Jerome, the guy Jenna initially believes raped her, was one of them, which complicates the investigation somewhat.
- Not the First Victim: The case is shaping up to be a he-said, she-said between a respected dentist and a drugged-up teen, but then the squad leaks the story to the press and it turns out Neil has 17 other victims.
- Police Brutality: To be expected from SVU, this time from Carisi, who nearly breaks Neil's wrist while fingerprinting him after he's arrested for raping his niece.
- Rape and Revenge: Deconstructed. Jenna's father abducts the man she accuses of raping her and ends up killing him. Except she identified the wrong person because the drugs the real rapist gave her made her memory foggy. Besides which, the alleged rapist's death leaves the father on the hook for manslaughter.
- "The Reason You Suck" Speech: Carisi gives Neil one for raping his niece while fingerprinting him, almost breaking his wrist in the process.
Carisi: I should've let [Jenna's mother] get her hands on you. You raped her daughter, ripped her heart out with her husband going to jail for killing someone that should've been you.
Neil Alexander: You're hurting me! I'm a dentist, I need my hands!
Carisi: That's all you got to say? That hurts? What hurts more? This, or what you did to Jenna?
Neil Alexander: You're hurting me! I'm a dentist, I need my hands!
Carisi: That's all you got to say? That hurts? What hurts more? This, or what you did to Jenna?
- Saying Too Much: The detectives have the victim, Jenna, confront her dentist uncle in a restaurant, but at first he's too smart to give himself away. At the last minute, Jenna lies that she's "late" and probably pregnant. The culprit doesn't say that that's not possible because he never had sex with Jenna; instead he says that that's not possible because he had a vasectomy and thus couldn't have gotten her pregnant—which means he just indirectly admitted that he raped her.
- Serial Rapist: The uncle is revealed as having been one since he was a college freshman: he has raped, assaulted, and groped fellow students, his patients, his sister's friends, and her daughter's as well.
- Villainous Incest: The real rapist of the episode raped his own niece.
