Recap: Tonight’s episode was like an acid-trip combination of the movie “Eyes Wide Shut” and that episode of 30 Rock where Liz gets mad because her boyfriend is so good-looking that he gets better treatment than everyone else. Our SVU writers must’ve made a New Year’s resolution that in 2012 they’d tread as close as possible to the line of network-TV sexual-content tolerance without actually crossing into an “R” rating. Even Ice-T’s wife, Coco, was surprised by what they had her wear in her sexy cameo. (According to The Huffington Post, Coco said ‘Wait, hold up! NBC is OK with this?'”) There were some seriously eye-popping scenes, and some nicely artistic renderings; no one can complain that the show wasn’t intriguing. But the plot was so far-fetched, the lacy lingerie so pervasive, the goat masks so perfectly burnished (goats again!), that this was more like a fraternity fantasy of what a sexual assault case looks like than an actual case.
We open in a kinky interactive theater that’s performing a show about Dante’s nine circles of hell. In dimly lit rooms, black-clad theater-goers are handed golden masks of animal faces and told “No one here knows you. No one will judge you.” The eerie masked audience stands solemnly before a raised dias. The way the stage is set up, you’re just waiting for the animal sacrifice or ritual sex to begin. And so it does. During a scene about infidelity, two masked members of the audience step forward, hold down the beautiful and barely-clad young actress, and violently rape her. The audience thinks it’s part of the show. But it’s real, and the young woman is devastated.
Here’s where the real craziness begins. Because it turns out that this young actress, Megan, has been targeted, stalked, assaulted, or set up by – count ‘em – four separate perverts in the last few weeks. There’s the horny director using professional leverage to pressure her to have sex with him. There’s the creepy cyber-geek stalker guy who’s wired her house with motion-detector cameras to videotape her while she’s in the shower. And there’s the judge who met her on SugarBabies.com, a sleazy matchmaking site where young women emulating Victoria’s Secret models find rich older men who want to trade cash for sex. The judge is the one who raped Megan on stage.
But this is SVU; we’re not done yet. The judge produces emails showing that Megan instructed him to rape her on stage — she wrote that it was her fantasy. The judge didn’t mean to rape anyone, he was just role playing. Is it possible there was actually no crime? Was this just a setup by Megan to get publicity? Through good detective work and the magic of Gilbert Gottfried’s hilarious police tech character, our detectives find that Megan didn’t send those emails. That was done by Megan’s dumpy, small-town, best-friend roommate who moved to the Big Apple with Megan a few months ago to seek fame and fortune on the stage along with her. (Was it just me, or did you know Plain Jane was the perp from the moment she thoughtfully handed Megan that frappucino?)
Plain Jane was pissed because Megan was getting all the good roles. Jane was the better actress. Hell, Jane even slept with the director and Megan didn’t, but Megan still scored the lead in “Nine Circles.” Jane was tired of watching how easy everything was for Megan, how generously everyone treated her because of her pretty face. So Jane joined SugarBabies.com, met the judge and learned his dirty little secrets, and somehow orchestrated the whole thing so that her best friend would be publicly raped while on stage. Oh, and this brilliant criminal mastermind also confessed the entire setup to the two detectives who casually mentioned that she must have been bummed that she didn’t get the role.
Verdict: C+
What they got wrong: In real life, the rapist would have been that first guy, the creepy geeky cyber stalker. Our writers had to write circles around themselves to make it not be that guy.
Once again, SVU answers the question of Whodunnit? with a well-spoken, well-educated, upwardly-mobile young woman. At least Jane was unattractive, unlike the usual perky cheerleader type (actually, with a little eyeliner, I’ll bet that actress could be quite cute. Poor girl — finally her big acting break, and she’s unfairly cast as the ugly roommate. Anyway…). Needless to say, the vast majority of sex crimes are committed by men. In 12 years as prosecutor, I had two or three cases where a woman committed a sexual assault against another woman. One case involved a male bartender and waitress who, together, sexually assaulted another waitress in the restaurant after hours, in an attempted threesome that went terribly wrong. That’s rare. But if you watch SVU, you’d think that young women are the ones committing all of the sex crimes in America.
Cpt. Cragen sagely explained why the DA wouldn’t take the case against the frisky director: “Everything linking him to the crime is circumstantial.” This is an annoying misconception that TV crime dramas perpetuate. There are two kinds of evidence in any trial: direct and circumstantial. Direct evidence supports the truth of an assertion directly, without an intervening inference. Circumstantial evidence is evidence in which an inference is required to connect it to a conclusion of fact, like a fingerprint at the scene of a crime. Both can be powerful and effective. Here’s an example my evidence professor always used: If you’re in a movie theater and someone walks in shaking off her wet umbrella, that’s circumstantial evidence that it’s raining outside. If someone just walks in and says, “It’s raining outside,” that’s direct evidence that it’s raining. Any judge in America will instruct the jury that circumstantial evidence must be given just as much weight as direct evidence. In this episode, the reason the DA couldn’t bring the case against the theater director was that they didn’t have any evidence connecting him to the crime.
What they got right: I’m having a hard time here, because I’ve never heard of a real case even close to resembling the one portrayed tonight. I’ve seen countless ski masks, but no golden-animal ones, and never a beautiful victim being targeted by four glamorously insane people at once. Still, here goes:
Megan’s cyber-freak stalker was a man she knew and trusted. Usually, stalkers are like that. They are friends, neighbors, co-workers, ex-girlfriends, or (very often) ex-boyfriends. Stalkers tend to become obsessed with people they already know. Stalkers tend to be men. And stalkers can be fairly high-functioning professionals, despite the mental issues that lead them to stalk.
The victim had no vaginal trauma and no DNA on her person. Finally. I think the writers put this in there as a red herring, to make you to think, “Aha, no vaginal trauma, maybe there was no rape, and this was all about the publicity!” Even if it was just a trick of plotting, it got a key real life detail right: in most sex cases, there is no trauma. And the lack of DNA simply means the perp used a condom.
The detectives shut down the whole theater because it was a crime scene, despite the director’s protests that he had a play to put on. The police can do that, even when there’s a standing-room-only crowd. I’ve seen cases where entire houses were dismantled: fireplaces removed, drywall taken down, sinks and plumbing torn out to be sent to the FBI for crime-scene processing. Once the theater became a crime scene, tickets for upcoming nights would lose all their value on eBay.
James Pollock says
12 January, 2012 at 7:10 amA couple more details:
On the SugarBabyZ website, both Holly and Meghan have profiles that use their real first names. Now, given how innocent that character was presented as, that might be possible if she’d set up her own profile… but I’m sure to a real, experienced sex-crime investigator the fact that the names matched would have been a real surprise.
They also glossed over a little bit of the technology: it’s a little bit harder to track email than they presented it (although it can be done, usually, it wouldn’t have been as reliable as they made it look). A skilled hacker can forge the email headers, making the messages appear to originate in a different place and at a different time from what they say. Thus, brief forensic examination of email is NOT sufficient to conclusively establish an alibi for someone with tech skills. (Had the roommate not confessed, I’d have had the tech guys go over the emails again to make sure that the creepy tech stalker hadn’t tampered with the emails.)
Finally, in the “what they did right” section, it should be noted that the confession would stand even though the suspect wasn’t Mirandized, because she wasn’t interrogated in custody.
Allison Leotta says
13 January, 2012 at 9:48 pmHey James, thanks for the great additions! Love ’em. I should have you guest blog some time. 🙂
TokoBali says
12 January, 2012 at 2:33 pmWhat They Got Wrong:
C+? You’re being generous on this one, Allison. I realize that in a 22-episode season, not all can be A’s, but this one…ouch. Some SVU episodes are realistic, some are entertaining. This one was neither.
What They Got Right:
Coco.
Allison Leotta says
13 January, 2012 at 9:46 pmIce-T certainly got that one right. I love that in the HuffPo piece, he says that the set is always crowded when Coco is making an appearance. There’s nothing sweeter than a man who is crazy about his wife.
RAFMIF says
13 January, 2012 at 6:06 amWhat show are you watching ware the sex crimes are committed by young women it is not svu. I can count on one hand the episodes ware the sole perp was female. Even then they usually bend over backwards to paint her in a sympathetic light.
While they have had women commit and be arrested for other crimes they are usually older or working with a male partner. There is usually a man committing the actual crime and they act like it is physically impossible for a woman to actually hurt somebody Olivia even said she did not believe a woman was capable of cold blooded murder. Even in this episode the girl just set up the rape and did not partake in the actual act
This was even mentioned last season in Totem they have rarely come across solo female molesters and ones they have are always Mrs. Robinson types. And even in that episode the girl claimed to be molested by her father not her mother because she was afraid nobody would believe her.
I like the insight you bring as a prosecutor to the real world legal standing of these cases. However Sexual assault committed by females is the most underreported and under prosecuted form of the crime and shows like this are not really helping. While the majority of these cases might be committed by men they are not the only ones.
Allison Leotta says
13 January, 2012 at 10:12 pmHey RAFMIF, Thanks for your comment; I always appreciate hearing from readers who are interested enough to write, even if we don’t agree. Your remark made me go back and look at the episodes I’ve recapped over the last 2 seasons. In 35 episodes, 11 of the perps have turned out to be female (not including the female victims who end up murdering their rapist in the final scene, of which there are many!). Highlights include a woman who dressed like a ninja and sodomized several men; a high-society rape victim who had actually been slipped psychadelic poisonous mushrooms by a rival beautiful heiress; and the cute tweenage girl who abducted, tortured and killed the little Romani boy a few episodes ago.
In real life, women commit less than 2% of all sexual offenses and their abuse often involves their own children. But on SVU, by my count, about 33% of the crimes are committed by women.
You’re right that female-on-female abuse is under-reported. Here’s an interesting article on that: http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/love-sex/taboo-tolerance/female-sexual-abuse-the-untold-story-of-societys-last-taboo-1767688.html
RAFMIF says
14 January, 2012 at 12:31 amThank you for responding to my post you would be surprised how many people just ignore those that disagree with them, I am really glad you are not one of them. However you seem to be confusing criminals on this show with sexual offenders. Only one of the episodes you mentioned had a female actually committing a sex crime, the ninja woman who they bent over backwards to acquitted of her crime, despite the fact there was a tone of evidence pointing to her guilt, (yes having been forced to have sex once as a teenager is bad but it douse not give you the right to become the female version of rapeman).
Of the episodes you mentioned both the ninja and high society women were shown as being victims, one of the above mentioned men at summer camp and the other of an abusive older woman. The young girls were based on an infamous serial killer from the 60’s and her accomplice.
While there are young female criminals they are usually shown in a sympathetic light with either a man or older woman being the real monster of the story, and even then the women rarely partake in an actual sex crime.
Also female on male sexual assault is also greatly under reported just not to the same extent as female on female, here are some interesting articles about it, http://www.livescience.com/17496-sexual-abuse-teen-girls-underreported.html, http://www.secasa.com.au/index.php/workers/25/37, http://kalimunro.com/wp/?page_id=1550, some books http://www.jimhopper.com/male-ab/#fem, and a website http://www.female-offenders.com. Have you read any of these?
It is true that the vast majority of sexual assaults are done by men (the most conservative estimate I have seen is 80%). However female perpetrators are more common then you or the show relies even if you do have one of the best svu blogs I have seen.
Allison Leotta says
17 January, 2012 at 2:05 amHey RAFMIF, you’re right about sex crimes on SVU versus generic crimes. (You must be good at logic tests!) But even in the episodes where it turns out that there was no sex crime, it almost always starts with an apparent rape, then turns out to have a female offender at the root. Not very common! Thanks for the compliment about the blog, and for the links. I will definitely check them out.
Alenna says
14 January, 2012 at 3:30 amNEA – Is that a normal police acronym that we should know about? I thought this episode was entertaining, but not at all realistic as far as police work is concerned. It seemed more like an Agatha Christie mystery story with a rape instead of murder as the crime. I have to congratulate the writers on not killing someone off in the end – that was a big change. With all the dark red and claustrophobic sets, I’m wondering if they were trying to appeal to the “vampire” genre audience?
Thanks Ms. Leotta, for pointing out that women are not usually the perps in sex crimes cases. I’ve really enjoyed watching SVU over the years, but I’ve always felt like they’ve had way too many episodes where “the woman” was found to be guilty; either a cruel mother, or crazy teenage girls, or (like in this case) a jealous girlfriend. Most sex crimes cases are about rape, pedophiles, (child) porn, and underage prostitution and most of the perps are men. Sex trafficking involves more women perps, but still mostly men.
James Pollock says
14 January, 2012 at 9:14 amStrictly speaking, prostitution (underage or not) involves female criminals as well as male criminals… at least, in its most common form it does.
Alenna says
14 January, 2012 at 2:54 pmProstitution generally belongs to the “vice squad” rather than the sexual crimes unit of most police departments – except in cases where underage girls and forced sex trafficking are involved. I’m not sure how the vice units decide to “transfer the case” to sex crimes nowadays. Probably if the girl (or woman) says that she’s been coerced into it. Most underage girls are lured into prostitution by men (boyfriends, father figures who turn out to be pimps), not by women. In the cases of Eastern European sex trafficking, many of the “recruiters” have been women.
Allison Leotta says
17 January, 2012 at 2:11 amHey Alenna, great points. In my former office, sex-crimes prosecutors don’t handle prostitution cases — but do handle the circumstances when prostitutes are *victims* of sex crimes, which is quite common. Prostitutes are very vulnerable victims. Prostitution itself is generally charged as a local misdemeanor, which is a small step more serious than a very bad traffic ticket. On the other hand, cases of human trafficking can merit federal prosecutions which result in decades of imprisonment.
I think the NEA mentioned in this show was the National Endowment for the Arts. I missed the exact context, but it was something about putting on the play. And yes I think you’re right, the dark red sets may have been for the benefit of the vampire-loving crowd!
Allison Leotta says
17 January, 2012 at 2:12 amTrue, James, although the females are not perpetrators. Generally, prostitution is considered a “victimless” crimes. To the extent that there are victims, I’d argue that they’re the prostitutes themselves.
James Pollock says
18 January, 2012 at 2:10 pmIn the wide spread of prostitution crimes (where it IS a crime, of course) the “victim” is society in general… but in RELATED crimes, you can have quite the range from assaults and murders of women to robbery; human trafficking underlies quite a bit.
Lots of people pick a side… my point is that both the prostitutes AND the johns are engaging in criminal acts. It’s the same as street-corner drug sales; both buyer and seller are criminals… and it’s the neighbors who complain until the police do something.
Aeon J. Skoble says
28 January, 2012 at 2:08 pmSorry to be late with this comment, but the case did raise some of the issues presented in the British case DPP v. Morgan: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DPP_v_Morgan, though I would have liked it if there had been some discussion of these issues in the dialogue.
Allison Leotta says
3 February, 2012 at 1:56 pmThat is an interesting case from Britain. I hadn’t heard of it before, and I’m glad I have now. Thanks for linking so we can all check it out, Aeon!
Dami says
29 February, 2012 at 8:45 pmHi Allison, I don’t watch SVU a lot but I just wanted to tell u how much I love ur blog. I am a law student and I came across ur website on a school magazine. I love the fact that u r very receptive to criticisms! I don’t think I could b like that. Also I have a love hate relationship with evidence in school n ur comments make me understand some things in real life application.
Anyway, keep up d good work!!!!!!
Allison Leotta says
29 February, 2012 at 8:58 pmThanks, Dami! It’s really nice to hear that my blog was mentioned in a school magazine. I’m so glad you’re enjoying it! You made my day. Best of luck with your evidence class! Hope you end up with more love than hate. 🙂
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