Written By Judith McCreary
Directed By Arthur W. Forney
A man in custody at a mental hospital after having streaked through Central Park claims to have witnessed a rape in a break room. The alleged victim, Gia Eskas (Natasha Lyonne), denies being assaulted and her credibility is shaky due to false rape accusations in the past.
Tropes
- All Take and No Give: Gia's mother Diane and her sister Bella have this kind of relationship. Diane cooks for Bella and her husband George and Bella has a more domineering personality than her sister, at one point grabbing Diane's arm to drag her out of the police station.
- Broken Bird: Gia, as a result of being sexually abused by her uncle. Her history includes an emotional breakdown, drug use, and suicide attempts.
- The Bully: Gia's aunt Bella has shades of this to her sister Diane once her husband is accused of raping Gia.
- Creepy Uncle: George Zane has been raping Gia since she was 14.
- Decoy Protagonist: Darren Bickford, the man caught streaking through Central Park in a drug-induced haze, is set to be the focus of the episode. However, upon witnessing a woman he claims to have been raped at a mental hospital, the episode shifts the focus away from him to the alleged rape victim, Gia Eskas.
- Extreme Doormat: Gia's mother, Diane. This causes her to not see the signs that her daugher was being sexually abused for 10 years by her brother-in-law.
- Foreshadowing: This is the first time we hear Rollins mention her sister and her troubles with drugs. Throughout the episode, Rollins reveals a knowledge of drug abuse and patients who are institutionalized.
- Grew a Spine: Gia's mother starts realizing that Gia really wasn't lying about her sexual abuse at George's hands and pushes back at her sister's attempts to deny his actions. Her refusal to not lie to SVU about George's toolbox where he kept his photos of Gia's abuse is the first step.
- My God, What Have I Done?: Gia's mother is horrified to learn that her brother-in-law had abused her daughter when the photos he took of his abuse are discovered.
- Small Role, Big Impact: Despite only appearing in the opening of the episode, the streaker's claims about witnessing Gia's rape in the mental hospital he's confined to prompts the SVU detectives to investigate what he saw and discover the horrible truth about her "alleged" rape.
- Streaking: The man from the opening scene runs around naked through Central Park.
- What You Are in the Dark: Darren, the streaker, is still coming off of his drug-induced high and tries to escape the hospital as soon as the officer watching him leaves him alone to deal with an emergency. He hears the rape, goes to investigate, then immediately reports it multiple times and insists on getting SVU to investigate it without caring about his own charges.
