Confession (Season 10, Episode 2)
Premise: A teenager asks SVU for help with his attraction to his little stepbrother, and the case widens to a website for pedophiles, a furious stepfather and a killing.
- Air date
- Season/Episode
- Season 10, Episode 2
- Starring
- Det. Olivia Benson (Mariska Hargitay), Det. Elliot Stabler (Christopher Meloni), Sgt. John Munch (Richard Belzer), Det. Odafin “Fin” Tutuola (Ice-T), Capt. Donald Cragen (Dann Florek), ADA Kim Greylek (Michaela McManus), ME Dr. Melinda Warner (Tamara Tunie), Defense Attorney Roger Kressler (Ned Eisenberg)
- Guest stars
- Marshall Allman as Eric Byers, Tom Noonan as Jake Berlin, Teri Polo as Dana Kelley, Josh Charles as Sean Kelley, Aaron Mayer as Cory Kelley
- Ripped from the headlines
- Jake Berlin is reportedly modeled on Jack McClellan, a self-described pedophile whose website of photos of young girls taken at public events caused an outcry in 2007.
- Director
- Arthur W. Forney
- Writers
- Judith McCreary
Summary
“Confession” opens with Greylek telling Cragen that she will be at crime scenes and interviews from now on, while the squad fails to persuade Lisa Deering to testify against her husband, Frank, who beat and raped her. Then 17-year-old Eric Byers walks in and tells Benson he is sexually drawn to his five-year-old stepbrother, Cory, is drinking and blacking out, and fears what he might do. His mother, Dana Kelley, says Eric would never hurt Cory, while her husband, Sean, vows to kill him. Dr. Larom finds no physical signs of abuse on Cory, though she says some assaults leave none. Eric insists he has not touched the boy and says Jake Berlin, who runs a website called Pediaphax, convinced him he was born this way and should look but never touch.
Berlin, 57, posts photos of children taken in parks and playgrounds, but none are nude, so the site stays up. He tells Benson and Stabler that he desires young girls but keeps his distance. Cory then appears to tell investigators, using a doll, that Eric molested him, and Eric vanishes. A child psychologist, Dr. Engles, thinks Cory was coached. CSU finds semen on a T-shirt of Cory’s, but the DNA is Sean’s, and he says he masturbated in the bathroom. Stabler, assigned to identify children in Berlin’s photos, finds one of his own daughter Elizabeth, 15, goes to Berlin’s apartment and beats him, and Cragen suspends him without pay. Benson, doubting that Eric abused Cory, persuades Greylek to offer a plea on child pornography found on Eric’s laptop, which would mean prison and treatment.
Benson and Fin follow Dana to a rented room, where Eric lies stabbed to death. Dana says she refused to bring him home and gave him $300. Warner counts 18 stab wounds and finds that Eric was sodomized with a wooden object, which matches Cory’s homemade baseball bat. With his lawyer, Roger Kressler, present, Sean admits assaulting Eric with the bat but insists he left him alive, and Benson tells him Cory was never touched. No blood is found in Sean’s truck or home, and blood the killer left behind points to an untreated diabetic: Berlin.
Spoiler, the ending: Under arrest, Berlin explains that Eric posted on the site that he had abused a child and urged Berlin to give in to his own urges, so Berlin killed him. Eric never named the child, and Benson’s interviews with children he approached at playgrounds turn up no victim. In the final scene, Lisa Deering returns to the squad, ready to testify against her husband.
Why it stands out
- Marshall Allman plays Eric Byers, Tom Noonan plays Jake Berlin, and Teri Polo and Josh Charles play Eric’s mother and stepfather.
- Greylek mentions her predecessor, Casey Novak, saying the days of easy warrants ended when Novak lied to a judge and was disbarred.