SVU Episode #6: Branded

Summary: Someone breaks into the home of two different men, drugs them, sodomizes them with smallish household items (leaving a few behind), then brands them on their chests with the words RUINER and TRAITOR. The cops catch the ninja-like assailant breaking into a third man’s house and – surprise! – it’s a woman. Turns out that fourteen years ago, the three guys were rich, privileged camp counselors at a camp for poor, underprivileged kids, and they gang-raped a 14-year-old girl camper. She decided to take her revenge by tattooing their crime onto their chests (The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, anyone?). She was motivated to do this by hearing a girl laugh on the street and intuiting that the laughter was from the child she conceived from the rape but had given up for adoption.

Verdict: C-

What they got right:  You get more information from witnesses when you talk to them alone. The cops walk into a apartment and find an actor from Mad Men being attended by EMTs while his concerned wife strokes his head and he clutches his shirt to his chest. The police ask, “What happened?” Mad Men claims, “I don’t know.” The cops shoo Mrs. Mad Men out of the room and ask him that question again. Now he unclutches his shirt and shows the cops where he was branded on his chest. He was too ashamed to show it in front of his wife. Good police interrogators know this. A child won’t admit that Uncle Herbert was touching him if Uncle Herbert is hovering in the doorway. A man won’t admit to having an affair if his wife is sitting in the room. Want the truth? Talk to people separately.

A major and correct theme of this episode was that men can be victims of sexual assault.  Sometimes, I think, the experience can be even harder for male victims, because there’s an extra level of perceived shame attached to their experience.

What they got wrong: On the other hand, a female perp who likes to serially rape men, like the woman in this episode, is kind of like the Loch Ness monster. I can’t say for sure that these creatures don’t exist. I’m just very skeptical that anyone has ever actually seen them.

And the courtroom scenes in this episode were a laugh a minute (not a good sign for a drama).  Everyone was shouting their stream-of-consciousness thoughts willy-nilly, making the proceedings look more like an episode of Jerry Springer than an American criminal trial.  Even Det. Benson got in on the outburts, when she wasn’t allowed to testify to everything she wanted to say. “But your honor!” she protested, “The jury isn’t hearing the whole story!” Mistrial, anyone? Cops can’t announce that they have a bunch of additional evidence they’re holding back. That’s unfair and prejudicial, and a seasoned detective like Benson would know better.

Later, the branded victims testified that the defendant is a crazy liar. That’s called character evidence, and the prosecution isn’t allowed to bring it up unless the defendant opens the door (which she didn’t). Finally, the trial came to its dramatic conclusion with the defense calling the 14-year-old daughter of the female defendant, and having her identify her biological father. How, you might ask, can she identify the man who is her biological father, since she never met him before? Well, the girl explains, the detectives ran a DNA test last night, then showed her a picture of the guy whose numbers matched. This three-degrees-of-separation ID procedure wouldn’t work in the case of a first-grade teacher trying to find out who stole somebody’s milk money, much less in a first-degree rape trial.

And I was astonished when the female defendant got off on “two minor counts of tresspass.” Hadn’t she confessed that she broke into these guys’ homes; injected them with horse tranquilizers; sodomized them with dice, candlesticks and other tchotchkes; and then branded their chests with wire hangers? Wasn’t she caught on video breaking into the third guy’s house, about to plunge a syringe into his neck? Yes, she was a crime victim herself, but that doesn’t give you free pass to go shoving common household items into people’s nether regions.

*All the views expressed here are mine alone, and do not necessarily represent the views of the Department of Justice.