Delinquent (Season 12, Episode 23)
Premise: A teenager caught in a woman’s bed falsely accuses Stabler of molesting him, and the detectives come to suspect he is a serial rapist.
- Air date
- Season/Episode
- Season 12, Episode 23
- 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), Defense Attorney Roger Kressler (Ned Eisenberg)
- Guest stars
- Sterling Beaumon as Hunter Mazelon, Rita Wilson as Bree Mazelon, Marina Squerciati as Annie Meyers, Robert John Burke as IAB Lt. Ed Tucker, Francie Swift as ADA Sherri West
- Director
- Holly Dale
- Writers
- Dawn DeNoon
Summary
“Delinquent” opens when Annie Meyers wakes to find 14-year-old Hunter Mazelon drunk and naked in her bed, and her date holds him for police. In her closet he left a backpack with an empty whiskey bottle, duct tape and pantyhose, and he also carried a butterfly knife. While waiting for his mother, Bree, Stabler takes Hunter to the youth office, where the boy abruptly shouts that Stabler is touching him, then calls it a joke. His science partner, Jake, says Hunter showed up high and pithed a live frog for their project, and the school reports that he grabbed a teacher’s breasts two months earlier, which Bree made go away. ADA Sherri West charges him as an adult with first-degree burglary, and at his arraignment Hunter tells Judge Alan Ridenour that Stabler molested him.
IAB Lt. Ed Tucker takes up the complaint, and Officer Eddie Nelson, who was near the open door, says he saw Stabler step back from the boy but not his hands. Stabler is ordered to stay away from Hunter. Defense attorney Roger Kressler proposes that each side drop its case; West refuses, but she later accepts a plea: a suspended three-year sentence with community service, alcohol treatment and sex offender therapy. Stabler interrupts Hunter’s allocution and is escorted out. That night Madeline Harris, 56, is raped and has her throat cut in an alley by a slim young man in a pantyhose mask. Stabler arrives at the Mazelons’ with Hunter’s probation officer and finds the boy drunk in clothes that do not fit him, but probation cannot arrest him on the spot.
The autopsy shows Madeline choked on her own blood. Stabler tails Hunter alone and finds him heading to a teen Alcoholics Anonymous meeting, which earns him another warning. Then ME Birch reports that the killer’s DNA matches five unsolved rapes in Oregon, where Hunter spent last summer with his father, and a sample from Annie’s closet ties it to Hunter. He is arrested, and Bree, shown the photos of his middle-aged victims, still denies it. Hunter squeezes out of a patrol car window, fakes paralysis at Bellevue and escapes in an MRI technician’s clothes. Drunk, he phones Bree, blames her for never protecting him and taunts Stabler. Bree then admits that a babysitter, Ellen Huffner, sexually abused Hunter when he was seven and that she never got him counseling.
Spoiler, the ending: The detectives find Ellen dead in her apartment and Hunter unhurt, covered in her blood. He says he went to make her explain what she did to him; she would not, and now she will never do it to anyone else. He adds that he thinks he will be all right now.
Why it stands out
- Rita Wilson plays Bree Mazelon, and Sterling Beaumon plays her son, Hunter.
- Robert John Burke returns as IAB Lt. Ed Tucker, who questions Stabler over Hunter’s complaint and brings up his history of complaints.