I would give an arm and a leg not to have watched tonight’s episode about ritual amputation. I had to put away the popcorn, and I’m still feeling a little woozy. What a freakshow: Men with rubber wings implanted in their shoulder blades! Women with surgically altered elf ears! Severed limbs floating in canals!

Gah.

Shake it off, Leotta. You’ve got a blog to write.

Okay. We open with a pretty girl being abducted by a rogue taxi driver. Soon, her leg is found floating in the Gowanus Canal. Anyone who’s seen the Gowanus shouldn’t be surprised by the next revelation: several mystery legs have been dredged from its murky depths. All were cleanly sliced off at the knee. And forensic examination reveals that their owners were still alive when the limbs were severed.

Is this the work of some sick guy, or just a new women’s razor gone terribly wrong?

When the rest of the girl’s corpse turns up, our good detectives must delve into the seamy underworld of “body modification,” where women pay to have their ears shaped like elves, and men have horns surgically implanted into their foreheads. Ice-T and Amanda go to a carnival tent – literally a freakshow, filled with tattooed, body-bending extras who were clearly the reason for this entire episode – and pretend to be a couple looking to spice up their sex lives by reshaping their cartilage.

The trail soon leads to a pretty one-legged dental receptionist, who makes a side business out of stealing her employer’s nitrous oxide and surgically altering people into the fantasy creatures of their choosing. At first, the detectives think the receptionist amputated her own leg as a sort of avant-garde extension of ear piercing. But she swears it was from bone cancer.

Is she a victim or a perp?

Our detectives discover a one-legged prostitute – the owner of one of the Gowanus gams – who tells them she sold her leg to a man for $25,000 to pay for her drug habit.

Is it the receptionist’s creepy dentist boss or his psychiatrist brother? Turns out, the brothers’ mom lost her leg in a car accident when they were kids. The psychiatrist became obsessed with one-legged women. After counseling the brave receptionist through her bone-cancer amputation, he decided women simply look better with one leg. Thus began his mission to de-leg the women of New York.

After a heart-to-heart with Olivia and Amanda, he cheerfully leads the detectives to the world’s least-monitored storage facility (didn’t anyone notice women going in with two legs and leaving with one?).  In his penthouse storage unit, the sick psychiatrist has a little shop of horrors, complete with surgical saws, operating tables, and before-and-after photos of his victims. His eyes get all dreamy as he contemplates how Olivia and Amanda would look as amputees. They scowl, cuff him, and lead him away.

Verdict: C

What they got right:

The detectives tonight used some very standard and respectable techniques that real police really use. Their methods included many we’ve discussed on this blog before: pulling security video, tracking cell phone numbers, looking up tattoos in the tattoo database, interviewing witnesses, police lying to witnesses to get a confession, and DNA testing to find the legs’ owners. All methods were quite realistic and authentic. It was just the subject matter that was bizarre and over-the-top.

As Nick said, “This just got weird.”

But – they had some basis in fact. There really is a whole freaky subculture of self-mutilation (also known as body modification). As someone with pierced ears, I may be waxing hypocritical here. But I spent way too much time going down a most disturbing Google rabbit hole tonight. If you have a strong stomach and the desire to see images you may never be able to get out of your head, click here to explore 3D body art, Satanic scarification, suspension (this one actually made me shriek), and even body modification for pets.

The show is certainly not falling into the trap of being predictable or cliched. You won’t find any crazed psychiatrists with sexualized amputation fetishes on Everybody Loves Raymond. Our SVU writers have proven themselves willing and able to go far afield to keep the show fresh and unique for us.

Um… thanks?

 What they got wrong:

I’ve never heard of somebody getting their left leg cut off in some sort of bizarre ritualized mutilation fantasy. The right leg, perhaps.

No, seriously, I don’t need to tell you how crazy the plot was.  We all know the entire storyline was just an excuse for that crazy body-mod circus tent.  Which was some seriously entertaining television, but not remotely like any real case in the history of real cases.

On a more specific level, I’ve seen some terrible money-making schemes, but a prostitute selling her leg for $25,000 just doesn’t ring true. People have been known to sell their extra organs for money (kidneys are popular). Funeral parlors have been charged with cutting off corpses’ limbs and selling them for medical research. The worst thing I saw as a prosecutor were mothers who sold their own children into prostitution in order to fund a drug habit. But I’ve never heard of a single person selling their limbs for any amount of money. Maybe I’ve just been hanging out in the wrong circus tents.

Well, what do you think, SVU fans? Is amputation the new black? Would you be willing to sell any part of your body for cash? And what are the chances that a crazed psychiatrist who has a leg-amputation fetish would fall for a one-legged girl who just happens to be into surgical body-modification? Leave your comments!

Tonight’s show started with a brutal crime landing right on Ice-T’s doorstep. His son, Ken, announces that he’s engaged to marry a hot young hunk name Alejandro. Before Ice-T even finishes his hilarious scowl of surprise, Alejandro is abducted by a bunch of thugs who stuff him into a van, take him to a dingy apartment, and beat and sodomize him with a baseball bat while yelling gay-bashing insults.

Ice-T is outraged, but the top brass take him off the case. (Good call, top brass). Of course, Ice-T goes rogue and keeps investigating. Amanda (who apparently has a considerable bad-girl streak of her own) goes with him to a suspect’s apartment. Although they don’t have a warrant, they barge into the house. The hugely pregnant resident demands that they leave – but Amanda blocks the woman into the kitchen while Ice-T goes to her bedroom and rifles through  underwear drawers. Bad cops! No donut! Ice-T finds an unregistered gun, which Nick then uses to strong-arm the pregnant woman’s boyfriend into confessing that he and a bunch of his gang friends assaulted Alejandro. SVU arrests all of the gang members involved.

Case closed, right? Of course not. We’re not even at the second commercial break.

Another man is soon abducted, pulled into a van, assaulted and gay-bashed. Our second victim is played by Tony Hale, the actor known for his hilarious portrayal of Buster Bluth on Arrested Development. (Hale tweeted: “Going to be on Law & Order tonite. I’ve heard it’s my best comedic performance to date.”)

Our detectives scratch their collective heads. With all the gang-bangers locked up, who assaulted Buster? We soon learn it was the pugnacious grocer father of a student at the school where Buster taught. But why? Well, that gets complicated. The grocer’s teenage son, Luca, reported that Buster molested him. But Luca can’t keep his story straight. Soon, he’s saying a different, mousy brunette female teacher was the one who molested him. But it’s not her either. After a quick chat with Martha Stewart (convincing as a prim and proper headmistress), our detectives learn that Luca was having sex with his curvaceous blond biology teacher. He made up the other allegations to cover for their illicit relationship.

Luca doesn’t want to file charges against this blond teacher — he wants to run away with her. But the biology teacher doesn’t. So Luca goes to her classroom and slits her throat with the least-frightening weapon of the season, a tiny frog-dissecting scalpel. We close with Nick convincing the blood-soaked boy to drop the scalpel rather than commit suicide with it.

Verdict: B

What they got right:

I find it remarkable that SVU ran this episode about gay marriage and hate crimes on the same day that President Obama announced his support for same-sex marriage. This season, SVU has had a near-psychic ability to run episodes at exactly the right time — sometimes even scooping the real news. (Like the Joe Paterno/ Jerry Sandusky case, where the fictional SVU episode aired before the real-life case broke.) It’s a little spooky. SVU creators, what kind of dark magic are you working over there in the writers room?

There really was a case involving a man who was allegedly kidnapped, tortured, and sodomized by a gang of young men in Brooklyn. In real life, the 30-year-old man was apparently targeted by the “Latin King Goonies” because he was gay and had sex with some 17-year-olds who were known to the gang members. The man was invited to a “party,” but when he showed up, the thugs allegedly beat him, sodomized him with a toilet plunger, and made one of his lovers burn him with cigarettes on his genitals.

Hate crimes against members of the lesbian, gay, bi and transgender community are on the rise – and tend to spike in response to gay marriage initiatives. Hate crimes were up 13% in 2010 – and 50% of hate-crime victims don’t even make police reports. Minorities and transgender victims are the least likely to come forward.  In response to the President’s announcement tonight, we will unfortunately probably see an uptick in violent crimes against the LGBT community.

What they got wrong:

My favorite line tonight was the pregnant girl who said, “I’ve seen TV – I know my rights!”’ Oh sister, you need to check out this blog.  Any semi-competent lawyer would’ve gotten that gun suppressed, and there would have been no leverage to elicit her boyfriend’s confession. Ice-T and Amanda violated that woman’s Fourth Amendment rights, which guard against unreasonable searches and seizures, by barging into her home and searching without a warrant. And the boyfriend’s resulting confession was “fruit of the poisonous tree” – meaning, the cops never would have gotten the confession without the bad search in the first place. Everything would have been suppressed.

I like a good confession as much as the next prosecutor. But this wasn’t a good one. Ice-T’s actions could have torpedoed the entire case, and the guy could have walked … if he or his girlfriend actually did know their rights. That’s what happens when you get your legal advice from TV shows!

(Editor’s note: this blog is for fun and does not give legal advice.)

The gruesome ending, where the boy killed his seductive blond biology teacher, was just a thin excuse to close with the requisite SVU gore. There have been plenty teenagers who declared their love and eternal devotion for the teacher who committed statutory rape by having sex with them. Those students never end up killing the teacher.

One of the most notorious cases of teacher/student statutory rape was that of Mary Kay Letourneau, the 35-year-old teacher who had an affair with her 13-year-old student, Vili Fualaau. She was prosecuted and jailed, but every time she got out, she returned to Fualaau. She had two of his babies while in jail. After her sentence was served, she married him, took the name Mary Kay Fualaau, and now seems to spend a fair amount of time giving interviews to glossy magazines.

Unlike the kid in tonight's SVU, Fili Fualauu responded with an engagement ring and People magazine interviews rather than killing his teacher/sexual assailant

One final “wrong” – I hear Martha Stewart didn’t bring home-baked cookies for the cast and crew when she guest-starred. Boo!

What do you think, SVU fans? Is the world actually being run by a cabal of SVU writers who are orchestrating real-life events to coincide with their episodes? Should Ice-T be punished for going off the rails or commended for being such a caring dad? And when a lifestyle guru shows up for her TV cameo, shouldn’t she bring some tasty treats for the crew? Leave your comments!

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A few days later, I was delighted to receive an email from the winning bidder, Mrs. BJ Litz of Owings Mills, Maryland. But she didn’t want to name the character after herself – she asked me to immortalize the name of her husband, George Litz.

I was incredibly touched by her email, which spoke in glowing words of her husband of over four decades.

George was recently diagnosed with lung cancer, which metastasized to his brain in September of last year. He’s been through cyber knife surgery and chemotherapy, and he recently finished ten days of full brain and chest radiation. I would probably be a nervous wreck, but BJ writes, “This was all done at Georgetown Hospital, love that place and all the people we came in contact with!!”

George was born in Baltimore, went to Baltimore City College, and began working for the family business, L&L Supply, when he was 17. He’s now the president and owner. Among other things, his company supplied the brick that built Oriole Park at Camden Yards (Baltimore’s baseball stadium) and the materials for PSINet stadium (home to the Baltimore Ravens).

Oriole Park at Camden Yards

BJ and George met on a blind date when BJ was nineteen and George was twenty. It must have been a real love match, because they’re still together, with three daughters, aged 40, 36, and 32 – and five grandchildren. You can read a fun story of how their daughter, Lacie, met her husband, a Ravens football scout, at a Ravens Christmas party here.

I love this picture of BJ and George dancing at their daughter’s wedding:

BJ and George Litz, dancing at their daughter's wedding at Ravens stadium

Amazing biceps for any woman, but particularly for someone who has five grandkids, right? Just looking at this picture made me resolve to go to the gym more.

But the part of her email I loved the most was this:  BJ wrote, “George is amazing and even more handsome then ever with no hair!!”

George Litz obviously has terrific taste in women, and he’s one of life’s good guys. I’m honored to be naming one of the good guys in my next book after him.

We start with a four-year-old boy calling 911 because Mommy is asleep and won’t wake up. The operator uses cell-phone tracking technology to pinpoint his location. Moments later, Olivia and Nick bust through the boy’s door. They find his mother, bloody and unconscious, on the floor.

After a commercial break, we learn that mom just had too much to drink and slipped and fell. And here, folks, is where the case would have ended in real life.

But we know the show isn’t over because no pretty 16-year-old girls have yet made their appearances. Not to worry; they soon do. In droves.

Turns out, mom fell after fighting with her 16-year-old daughter about the man the girl was seeing. The girl then left and spent the night out. SVU launches into a full-scale investigation of the girl. We’re talking ATM records, credit-card tracking, cell phone tracing, and library searches justified by the Patriot Act and a FISA warrant.

After unleashing the full force of the criminal-justice arsenal to locate one rebellious teenager who’s been out of contact with her mom for eight hours, the detectives learn that the girl went to visit her biological father – mom’s sperm donor.

Checking out some children-of-sperm-donor chat rooms, the detectives discover that several 16-year-old girls have met with the same father … and had sex with him. Ew. BD Wong sagely explains that falling in love with a long-lost father often happens; he even provides a wonderfully Wong-like scientific name for the phenomenon: “Genetic Sexual Attraction.” Double ew.

So who’s the dysfunctional Dad?

Without probable cause for a warrant, Olivia and Amanda go to a sperm bank and pretend to be a smolderingly sexy lesbian couple. (Of course they do. Actually, I’m impressed that the writers had the restraint to wait 20 episodes before deploying this device.)

As it so often does on SVU, everything comes down to a party in the Hamptons. There, several suspects hobnobbed with the fertile surgeon and his family. SVU hones in on one of the partygoers – oh my God, it’s Dawson Leery from Dawson’s Creek! And, yikes, he’s gotten super creepy since moving away from Capeside.

Dawson, it turns out, was in love with the surgeon’s British wife when they were in college – like twenty years ago. When he saw her at this Hamptons party, looking so happy and well-adjusted, he decided to track down her husband’s sperm-donor daughters and have revenge sex with them. (Somewhere down deep inside, we all want our exes to be miserable without us. But this reaction seems, at the very least, excessive.)

But wait – there’s more! Now’s he’s got the surgeon’s pouty daughter locked in a hotel room! He’ll only tell Mom and Dad where she is if Mom will dance with him to the tune of a meaningful song that’s been conveniently downloaded onto an iPad in the police interrogation room! And when Mom agrees to the creepy dance in the dimly lit cell, Dawson looks like he might break her neck! But instead he tells her … he killed her daughter!

Oh my God! But … he actually didn’t! The surgeon’s teenage daughter is safely ensconced in satin sheets at a posh hotel. And she’s really annoyed when SVU busts in, finds her alive, and tells her she can’t shag Dawson any more.

Verdict: D+

What they got wrong:

My challenge tonight is keeping this short.

First, detectives don’t respond to 911 calls. Patrol officers do. In real life, Olivia and Nick would have been ordering mocha Frappucinos while their uniformed colleague answered the little boy’s 911 call.

Second, anyone who’s ever called in a missing person knows the police won’t even write up a report – much less deploy the Patriot Act, FISA, and cell phone tracking – for someone who hasn’t been missing for a while. Different jurisdictions have different rules, but usually require at least 24 or 48 hours of being missing. Especially if circumstances indicate that the “missing” person is just off fooling around with her boyfriend.

Third, I’ve never heard of a stalker carrying a torch passively for twenty years and then deploying the most outrageous stalking of all time because he glanced a smiling ex at a party.  Stalkers come in many shapes and sizes, but I can’t imagine one as tenacious and patient as Dawson was tonight.

My biggest nit is this: in real life, this whole investigation never would have happened. All the sex here was consensual and the girls were of age. In D.C., the age of consent is 16. That means a 16-year-old girl can have sex with whoever she chooses (with a few exceptions for people with special duties, like guardians, teachers, and ministers, in which case, they’d have to wait until she turned 18).

Will a 16-year-old girl always choose the right guy? Survey says: No. Might she unwisely believe some creep’s ridiculously bogus claims? Sure.

But lying to get sex is not a crime. (DA’s offices would be overwhelmed if they had to investigate every guy who scored by pretending to be richer or more devoted than he really was). Pretending to be a someone’s biological father in order to seduce her is gross and deplorable. But it’s not illegal.

And police don’t chase down disturbing yet legal acts. They don’t have the jurisdiction.  Often, in fact, they’re looking for the easy route to “decline” a case. They want to leave the precinct, maybe grab a beer, then go home and see if the wife is feeling frisky.

What they got right:

911 calls from landlines have long been traceable to a real address, but the technology for cell phones only recently caught up. Cell phone locations can now be pinpointed to within 50 meters.  But this technology is new, and many police stations don’t have it yet. Also, it doesn’t help if you’re in an area with a lot of skyscrapers and 50 meters could mean 1000 different dwellings.  You’re much better off if you can tell the 911 operator exactly where you are.

Kathryn Harrison

There really is a phenomenon called “Genetic Sexual Attraction,” where related family members who grew up apart fall for each other when they meet. The theory is that you tend to be attracted to people who resemble you, and who resembles you more than good old dad?  I had to Google this all up.  It’s not a phenomenon that comes up much in prosecuting sex crimes. What actually comes up, over and over, is a stepfather or uncle or grandfather who is sexually attracted to his stepdaughter, niece or granddaughter, who he’s known all his life.

An author named Kathryn Harrison  published a memoir called “The Kiss” regarding her four-year-long incestuous relationship with her biological father, which started when she was 20 years old.

On that disturbing note, SVU fans, what do you think? Can you imagine anyone exacting revenge on an ex-girlfriend by seducing her husband’s sperm-donor offspring? Will Ice-T use the Patriot Act to nab people with too many parking tickets? And what are the chances of Olivia and Amanda locking lips before the season is over? Leave your comments!

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The kickoff was an incredible Mega Book Signing featuring the legendary Nora Roberts and a dozen other romance authors at Turn the Page Books, Nora’s terrific independent bookstore in Boonsboro, Maryland. Hundreds of enthusiastic romance readers came from far and wide and bought armloads of books. It was great to meet such a devoted group of readers, and to chat with some of my favorite authors. I was lucky to sit next to Pamela Palmer, Christine Trent, and #1 NYT bestseller Robyn Carr, who later gave the retreat’s keynote speech and was witty, wise and inspiring. I now have a serious girl crush on her.

Pamela Palmer, Christine Trent, me, Robyn Carr

I also learned that Nora Roberts is a bit of a baby whisperer.  Amanda Brice’s little boy fell in love…

Nora Roberts, baby whisperer

The retreat itself was fabulous – not only featuring writing classes led by bestselling authors like Elizabeth Boyle, but yoga, massage, and drunken karaoke. There was even a raucous game of Romance Jeopardy, which included categories like “Heaving Bosoms” and “Throbbing Members.”

Tim Bentler-Jungr and Kathleen Gilles Seidel

Present were 130 women and 1 man.  The single legendary Y chromosome belongs to Tim Bentler-Jungr, a most hilarious and charming gentleman, who was quite chivalrous about allowing the hordes of ladies to use the men’s room. Here he is, with acclaimed romance writer Kathleen Gilles Seidel.

And I was delighted to meet the Waterworld Mermaids, a lovely group of romance writers who keep a fun collective blog about the writing life.  (And I’m not saying that just because I won a very cool gift basket in their charity raffle.)  Check out their blog!

All in all it was an amazing weekend. I learned about the craft, made friends with some talented writers, and drank just a little too much.  I left feeling refreshed and inspired. And I didn’t even have to fend off  Fabio once.

Tonight’s episode opened with the fifth victim of the SOHO Rapist being bundled into an ambulance. The requisite twist? The crime was interrupted by a man in a superhero costume. Both men fled.

A British journalist taunts NYPD for its inability to catch the perp, and a community group expresses its collective outrage. The naysayers get even louder when a 6th victim is targeted. The masked man again comes to the rescue before dashing off into the night.

Olivia tracks down the suspect, and beats him up after he tries to hit her. Bam! Pow! Nice moves, Olivia. And she didn’t even have to get bitten by a spider.

A few odd things about the rapist:  he hasn’t left a shred of DNA at any of the 6 scenes. The taunting journalist claims he has a taunting letter written by the rapist, which includes details that only the rapist would know. Oh, and the rapist keeps getting into fights with a guy dressed like Batman. My Spidey sense says something is off here.

Meanwhile, Nick ignores the case and trails his wife to charming sidewalk cafes where she sips white zinfandel and giggles with her apparent lover. Instead of bringing evidence to the crime lab, Nick drives to Philly to punch the guy in the face. Wham! Ka-pow!  (I could picture several real cops doing exactly the same thing under similar circumstances.)

Rape #6 turns out to be a copycat rapist, who’s only guilty of  the single crime. Nevertheless, the copycat is beaten within an inch of his life and hung from a basketball court fence. The culprits? A bunch of caped crusaders who call themselves the New York Justice League. They’ve decided the justice system is too slow, and they want revenge on a much quicker schedule. (Quicker even than SVU’s two-minute evidence processing system? Imagine how peeved they’d be by the wait in real life!)

Moving on to rape #7. The victim is Fantastica, a woman from … the Justice League itself! Holy coincidence, Batman! Wearing a mask and thigh-high patent-leather boots, Fantastica was staking out a rooftop with a stuttering comic store clerk in a rayon cape, when the SOHO rapist attacked her. The stuttering-clerk-turned-vigilante claims he fended off the rapist.

After a commercial break, Nick’s wife storms into the police station and berates our handsome young detective (because, hey, he’s not really doing any police work anyhow, right?) for punching her platonic friend. Also, that house she’s been going to? It’s not her lover’s – it’s her shrink’s. (Nice call, Tokobali!)

Nick’s remorse established, SVU barrels through some suspects for the SOHO rapist: the prime one being the randy restauranteur whose alibis include half the sous chefs in Manhattan. Personally, I suspected the taunting reporter. How’d he know those were details “only the rapist” would know? But no, it was the stuttering comic-book clerk – the very founder of the Justice League.  Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men?

Like so many superheroes before him, he did it all to impress a girl. A beautiful woman had stopped by his comic-book store and scoffed at the notion that NY was dangerous. To prove to her that it was, the clerk began the string of SOHO rapes. Convinced by the attacks, she shopped at BuyCostumes.com, joined the stutterer’s nascent Justice League, took up the Fantastica persona, and went out with him to beat up other civilians. Riiiight.

Verdict: B-

What they got right:

Believe it or not, there have been a bunch of real-life full-grown men dressing up as superheroes and walking city streets hoping to fight crime. Things didn’t turn out so well for them, either. A caped crusader calling himself Phoenix Jones of the Rain City Superheroes was arrested in Seattle after allegedly pepper-spraying a crowd of innocent club-goers in the mistaken belief that he was breaking up a fight. Folks, leave the police work to the police, and the molded plastic breast-plates to Val Kilmer.

I thought it was interesting that the SOHO rapist “started things he couldn’t finish.” As a sex-crimes prosecutor, I was astonished by how many rapists became impotent during the sexual assault itself.

I also liked that Nick’s wife said, “I’m your wife! You can’t treat me like one of your suspects.” My husband and I are both lawyers, and, during fights, often accuse each other of cross-examining.

What they got wrong:

Ice-T said they’d get the rapist’s note from the British reporter’s “cold dead hands.” True, it would probably take a while. But no one has to die. The Department of Justice is very careful about issuing subpoenas to journalists. Per the U.S. Attorney’s Manual, before any prosecutor issues such a subpoena, she must get a series of approvals within DOJ. Might take a while for the politicals mull it over. If the top brass agrees, the prosecutor can then issue a subpoena compelling the evidence.

The journalist would probably move to quash the subpoena, citing First Amendment freedom of the press, and the court would hold a hearing. If the journalist had direct evidence of a crime, the government would probably win, and the reporter would be in contempt of court and possibly jailed if she still refused to turn the evidence over. Journalist Judith Miller  spent 12 weeks in nasty old D.C. Jail while she refused to turn over her sources in the Scooter Libby case. Eventually, she gave in, testified under government subpoena, and then probably went home and took the longest shower of her life. So – cold dead hands? No. A few months later? Yes. Certainly long enough to enrage the masked men of the Justice League.

Will they stop continually sending Amanda out as bait for rapists? I know she looks great in a short skirt and stilletos. But this is just silly, and not something real police officers do. Real crime is way too random and sporadic for this technique.

Ice-T grumbled that it was a “nice change” that the stop-and-frisks would be of white males this time. Oh, come on. That may be a valid point in real life. But the vast majority of victims and suspects on SVU are white. And good looking. And endowed with a trust fund.

Also, Ice-T, please snap on a pair of gloves and stop fondling the rapist’s knife with your bare hands. Jeez Louise, we’re never going to get any usable prints that way. That said, I laugh at every one of your awesome one-liners.  Although the best one tonight was Munch’s, after Nick’s wife stormed into the precinct:  ”That’s why I stopped marrying Italian women.”

Recap: We open with a hedge-fund manager Skyping with his lingerie-clad wife. She’s in her posh kitchen in the Upper East Side; he’s in Hong Kong. But with the power of video chat, she does a sexy little striptease for him across the miles. Suddenly, a masked man bursts into the kitchen, holds a gun to the wife’s head, and rapes her on the kitchen counter – all before the eyes of her horrified and helpless husband.

The wife is kidnapped and held for $250,000 ransom. Hubby is ordered not to call the police.  But you can’t fool SVU, and they’re soon on the case. They stake out the drop point, and soon … the wife comes to pick up the cash!

Okay, that’s a tip-off that we’re not dealing with seasoned kidnappers. Sending the victim to go pick up the ransom isn’t a brilliant move.

In fact … there are no kidnappers. The wife (played by the wonderful Chloë Sevigny), was sleeping with multiple delivery men, drug dealers, and even her husband’s business partner. Although she was “living the Upper East Side dream,” all those shopping sprees and trips to the Hamptons weren’t enough. So she livened things up with“screwcations” in “F-pads” while her husband was off  making the money to buy the expensive lingerie she wore to these assignations. (Did SVU just make those words up? I’m impressed, although slightly appalled … which I guess is what SVU is all about.)

And it turns out that she set up the whole rape/kidnapping, by convincing a delivery boy to pretend to rape her. (Why? It was never clear. Maybe she wanted the ransom money? But she seemed to have plenty of pocket cash. Just for thrills then? Hard to believe a rich housewife would risk so much.)

The DA charges Chloë with obstruction of justice and making a false police report. Although a hidden video shows Chloë having a delightfully orgasmic romp with the man she claimed kidnapped her, she gets off with a mistrial by seducing a juror who hangs the jury 11-1. Meanwhile, her adoring husband defends her every step of the way.

Perhaps inspired by how stupid that husband was, Nick follows his own wife (who we’ve suspected of cheating on him for a while now). He sees her knocking on the door of another man’s house. Ouch.

Verdict: B

What They Got Right:

There have been some notorious false claims of rape. A female prison psychologist in Sacramento, Laurie Ann Martinez, recently faked an assault to try to convince her husband that they needed to move to a better neighborhood. She split her own lip with a pin, scraped her knuckles with sandpaper and had her friend punch her in the face. Investigators say she even ripped open her blouse and wet her pants to look like she’d been knocked unconscious. If you want a new zip code, I recommend enlisting a realtor and having a heart-to-heart with your spouse instead.

Similarly, a weather reporter falsely claimed that she’d been raped while jogging through Central Park. She did it for the attention.

While false reports make headlines, the vast majority of reports of sexual assault are authentic. While hard to estimate for obvious reasons, many sources say that only one to two percent of rape reports are faked – about the same rate of false reporting as in every other crime.

Another authentic detail was the fact that the wife at first blamed “three black men” for her kidnapping. We’ve seen this pattern so many times: a white women falsely reporting a crime, blaming a fictional black man for perpetrating it. The most notorious and despicable of this was Susan Smith, who drowned her own children, then falsely claimed that a black man carjacked them.

A modern and politically charged version of blackman blaming was the case of Ashley Todd. She was a John McCain campaign volunteer who claimed that a black man saw her McCain bumper sticker, beat her up, and then branded her face with a “B” for Barack. But the “B” on her face was backwards, as if scratched on in a mirror. Todd soon fessed up to having staged the whole thing herself.

What they got wrong:

I was shocked to hear Olivia say why she didn’t believe Chloe’s story: “Most rape victims shut down,” Olivia said. “But not her.” That’s wrong. Crime victims react in every possible way: from sobbing, tearing at their hair, or rolling on the floor, to dead calm, matter-of-fact, emotionless recitations. Some get sad, some angry, some laugh out of nervousness. One reaction is not any more valid or truthful than the other. Of all the characters in this show, Olivia would know that.

Nick told Chloe, “The rape kit shows that you were sexually assaulted.” A rape kit can’t do that. It can reveal whether the victim was injured or not. Swabs can be tested for the presence of semen, saliva, and blood. If found, a DNA profile can be built. Hair can be plucked, fingernails scraped. But – as seen in this case – a rape kit can’t say whether or not someone was sexually assaulted. Very often, the forensic evidence of a rape is exactly the same as the evidence of consensual sex.  A rape kit can support a claim of sexual assault, but does not, alone, prove it.

But perhaps the most unrealistic thing about the entire episode was how sweet and supportive this millionaire hedge fund manager was.

Well, SVU fans, what do you think? How likely is a real Upper East Side housewife to stage a rape while Skyping with her husband? Is Nick going to pretend he didn’t see his wife going to her F-pad , or will confront her about it? And, if the latter, will he be wise enough to check his gun at the police station first?  Leave your comments!

You can buy “Law of Attraction” at any of these outlets:

Amazon      Barnes & Noble     Books-a-Million      Indie Bound

The Backstory:

As a prosecutor of sex crimes and domestic violence in D.C., I saw heartbreaking tragedies, acts of shocking evil, and vulnerable victims every day— but also moments of real heroism, true love, and healing.  Given the stories I witnessed, the rich cast of characters I worked with, and my lifelong love of fiction, I had to write a book.

In Anna Curtis, I wanted to create a character who people would relate to and root for, and a story that would both entertain and teach about the way the criminal justice system works—and doesn’t work.  My day job and my writing were mutually beneficial: my work gave me interesting material, while writing my fictional characters made me understand my real-life witnesses more deeply.

I focused on a nightmare shared by domestic-violence prosecutors: losing a case and setting free an abuser who eventually kills his victim.  I wanted to explore the reasons why so many women go back to boyfriends who hurt them.  And I wanted to create a strong, smart female prosecutor who would be particularly empathetic to her witnesses because she shared some of their experiences – but whose romantic life would suffer from those same experiences.

For the sake of my wonderful mom and dad, I need to stress that Anna is not me and her family is not my family.  Similarly, all events in this book are fictional, and any resemblance between my legs and the legs on the cover is purely coincidental.

Law of Attraction was written in the spaces of my life between prosecuting and mommying.  I started writing the book while I was pregnant with my first son.  Back then, I would wake up at 5:00 a.m. and write for a couple of hours before heading to work.  I wrote at night and on weekends.  I carried a laptop everywhere and wrote wherever I could find a horizontal surface (and preferably a latte).  After my son was born, I wrote during his naps and after bedtime.  Now, the sound of a softly snoring baby triggers a Pavlovian response in me to start typing.