Summary: A billionaire with a penchant for 13-year-old girls forces them to give him massages with happy endings. He pays most of them off. But one French girl finally reports it, and the SVU detectives find his semen inside the girl. The billionaire shows up at the police station (with an expensive lawyer) and claims the girl raped him. He says he was sleeping in his massage room at home when the girl walked in and started fondling him. When he woke up, she threatened to cry rape if he didn’t finish, so he had sex with her. But the police soon find more girls he molested, as well as videos he made of his sex assaults. They arrest him and mock him for having a small penis.
Verdict: B+
What they got right: Some child molesters do try to get out of rape charges by claiming the child did the dirty work while they slept through it. It’s the sex-offender version of “The dog ate my homework.” Convenient, easy, and pretty damn unlikely. Defense experts have coined a term to try make it sound scientific: “sexsomnia” – having sex while you’re sleeping. I think this theory became popular in recent years because DNA testing shuts down every other defense for child molesters. It’s hard to say you didn’t touch a child when your semen is found inside her. If the victim was an adult, the guy could claim that his semen got there during a consensual encounter. But consent isn’t a defense to statutory rape. It doesn’t matter if a naked 15-year-old hands you a can of Redi-Whip and begs you to lick it off her – if you have sex with her, you’re on the hook. And so “sexsomnia” became an excuse for desperate defendants who need to explain how their semen ended up inside a child.
I had a defendant who made a similar claim. He was 55 years old, and had raped and impregnated his 13-year-old stepdaughter. At first, he denied ever touching her. But DNA testing proved the baby was his. So then he claimed that he was passed out drunk on the couch one night, and the girl (who was a virgin) climbed on top of him, had her way with him, and impregnated herself while he remained mostly unconscious. Right. She raped him. Because every 13-year-old girl dreams that her first sexual experience will be with her smelly, drunk, passed-out stepfather. (That guy is now serving 20 years.)
What they got wrong: Okay, let me get this off my chest (no pun intended): the DA’s cleavage. Was she applying for a search warrant or a job at Hooters? Real female sex-crime prosecutors are a conservatively dressed bunch. We’re in court all day talking about sex (and not the nice variety). We say words like “vagina,” “breast,” “penis,” and “ejaculate” hundreds of times a week. To each other. To witnesses. To judges and jurors and thugs and rapists. We’re immune to talking dirty, but we don’t want our lovely lady lumps bouncing around as demonstrative aids. You’re more likely to find a male lawyer in a kilt than a female sex-crime prosecutor showcasing her cleavage in court.
A more technical nit: will these defendants never stop talking to the detectives without their lawyers present? This billionaire’s lawyer probably charged him close to $1000 an hour. Seriously. So I’d expect that he’d advise his client not to talk to the police without him. That’s bare-bones first-year-law stuff. Yet the billionaire invited the NYPD into his mansion and showed them the massage room and the TV where he taped all his sexual assaults – giving them grounds for the search warrant that finally sunk him.
And what about that scene after the billionaire was arrested, and he was put in a holding cell in the middle of the police precinct, where he could watch and comment on the detectives as they reviewed his sex tapes and strategized about their investigation? That was some seriously bad feng shui. Our poor SVU detectives should be able to work without the defendant watching their every move. That setup was akin to handing Nixon the key to the Watergate and inviting him to make himself at home.
*The views expressed on this blog are mine alone and do not necessarily represent the views of the Department of Justice.
Andrew MacKie-Mason says
4 February, 2011 at 9:39 amAny opinion on the way the feds snatched the perp up at the end?
Allison Leotta says
4 February, 2011 at 6:12 pmThere would definitely be federal jurisdiction and hefty federal penalties for creating all of that child porn, and trafficking kids internationally to make it. It was realistic that the FBI might take over the case. But the manner in which they’d do it would be much less dramatic. Reps from the FBI, NYPD, DA’s office and the U.S. Attorney’s Office would have a sit-down and hash it all out. They might create a team of police officers from both organizations. If they did decide to take the whole thing federally, Elliott and Olivia would have heard the rumblings for weeks ahead of time — not as an FBI agent is leading the billionaire out the door, past his sobbing girlfriend.
david delee says
4 February, 2011 at 1:46 pmAllison, great review as always. Thanks for doing these. I have to say though I could see the billioniare not listening to his lawyer and talking to the cops. These types of people have such big egos they think they are smarter than the cops and can get away with anything. Look at just about any big-time celeb. Case and you often see that mentality. It is usually what trips them up.
What got me yelling at the tv was Olivia and Elliot’s behavior in the interview. Certainly in interviewing suspects there are times to be tough or sarcastic, as Elliot does so well, but in this situation even if they didn’t believe a word of what was being said, going along and listening would have served them better than baiting him did. SVU does the interviewer as sympathetic much better than most tv cop shows. It was dissapointing to see the writers go this way this time.
Thanks again. Great fun. I’m learning a lot from this.
Allison Leotta says
4 February, 2011 at 6:18 pmYeah, there are definitely guys who think they can talk their way out of everything. But one important job of a good defense attorney is keeping your client under control, and I think that in the vast majority of situations like this, the suspect would listen to his lawyer and keep his mouth shut. But — maybe not! It did make the episode more interesting. And I agree about the interrogation technique. The best police interrogators are polite and friendly; they get their subject talking, letting him go on until he trips himself up.
TokoBali says
7 February, 2011 at 3:48 pmThe criticism on the interrogation scenes returns often when SVU (or any other copshow for that matter) is discussed. I think the writers stick to these kind of scenes because of the conflict it produces. After all, SVU is a drama show, and drama comes from conflict, not patient and polite attitude towards a suspect. It’s one of the reasons why drama series can never be completely realistic.
Allison Leotta says
10 February, 2011 at 6:26 amYeah, there is a tension between what is real and what is dramatic. As a prosecutor, I spend a lot of time sitting at my desk poring through papers, and that would not make for great TV. Still, I think the best dramas are the ones that portray dramatic situations in a real-life way. I’m a law geek, but I think the criminal justice system is fascinating for what it really is.
Allison Leotta says
10 February, 2011 at 6:24 amAlso, thanks for your support, David! It makes me happy to hear that you’re enjoying the blog, and I really appreciate your kind words.
david delee says
4 February, 2011 at 1:50 pmA follow-up question for you, if you don’t mind. On several episodes of SVU and other shows, and I think you mentioned it here, they talk about a bradley hearing (I think that’s right). What is it and when might it come into play?
Allison Leotta says
4 February, 2011 at 6:20 pmBrady material is any information that might tend to show that the defendant didn’t commit the crime he’s accused of. Prosecutors have a strict obligation to turn Brady material over to defense counsel. If a prosecutor fails to do that, she will get in serious trouble, including possibly having her bar license revoked.
Sam S. says
4 February, 2011 at 5:20 pmI thought the SVU producers missed an opportunity for a much more interesting script.
While normally the “Actually, the minor raped me” defense would be laughably absurd, it had much more potential here. One of the characters suggested that the minor had framed the billionaire for blackmail. That could happen I suppose. And what if that was the truth? How could the adult male stop the blackmail without the minor claiming rape, and how would an adult male counter both the police attention and the endless attacks in the press? A very interesting dilemma, with a lot of dramatic potential and no clear solution.
Unfortunately, the SVU writers decided to remove all possible doubt by 1) having the suspect behave stupidly and 2) by having 2 dozen other victims show up to report their attacks. Can’t have any lingering doubts (or tension) I guess.
If it had just been the one minor vs. the one adult, it could have been a very interesting variant of the he said – she said issue. Is he really a billionaire child rapist, or is she someone who is blackmailing a person with endless means and very much everything to lose?
Allison Leotta says
4 February, 2011 at 6:23 pmGreat point. I totally agree.
Olivia R. says
5 February, 2011 at 4:19 amThanks for writing this blog, it’s really interesting. It’s nice to know I’m not the only one noticing the things that are wrong. My family has gotten rather annoyed with me for pointing things out…
Some of the things you have written have also been really helpful in my Criminal Law class 😀
And I really need to read your book now…it sounds really good 🙂
Allison Leotta says
10 February, 2011 at 6:28 amThanks a lot, Olivia! It’s fun to hear that my blog is helpful in your criminal law class. I wonder if I can get continuing legal education credit for that… 🙂
I hope you enjoy “Law of Attraction”! Let me know.
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