Behave (Season 12, Episode 3)
Premise: A recluse who says one man has raped her across the country for 15 years helps Benson pursue him, but his crimes are buried in untested evidence.
- Air date
- Season/Episode
- Season 12, Episode 3
- Starring
- Det. Olivia Benson (Mariska Hargitay), Det. Elliot Stabler (Christopher Meloni), Det. Odafin “Fin” Tutuola (Ice-T), Capt. Donald Cragen (Dann Florek), Defense Attorney Trevor Langan (Peter Hermann), Judge Elizabeth Donnelly (Judith Light)
- Guest stars
- Jennifer Love Hewitt as Vicki Sayers, James Le Gros as Bill Harris, Skeet Ulrich as Detective Rex Winters, Francie Swift as ADA Sherri West, Jennifer Barnhart as Detective Lorna Diamond
- Ripped from the headlines
- Drawn from the nationwide backlog of untested rape kits and from the experience of Helena Lazaro, a rape survivor whose kit went untested for 13 years before her attacker was identified.
- Director
- Helen Shaver
- Writers
- Jonathan Greene
Summary
“Behave” begins when a battered woman staggers onto a bus and tells EMTs she has been raped again by the same man, the fourth attack in 15 years. At the hospital she calls herself Julie McManus, declines a rape kit and leaves. Her thumbprint on a broken bottle in the alley where she was attacked identifies her as Vicki Sayers, and tax records lead Benson and Stabler to her Washington Heights apartment, where she lives as a recluse. On a stakeout, Benson chases Vicki down, finds her holding a gun she had delivered, arrests her for it and then talks her into the exam.
Vicki recounts the attacks: in a hospital storeroom when she was a 16-year-old candy striper in 1995, in her college apartment in 1998, and in Los Angeles in 2000, a week before her wedding. He took her ID after the first and last of those attacks and kept telling her to behave. Lotion in the kit traces to the Amsterdam hotel, where staff point to Bill Harris, who sells surgical equipment. Vicki picks him from a lineup, but a Providence hotel alibi frees him as she pleads with him in the hallway. Benson learns that Harris rented a car whose mileage fits a round trip to Manhattan. The detectives and Vicki then confront him in public, and his angry outburst about women points to other victims; his travel records match ten rapes in other cities.
ADA Sherri West needs more than Vicki’s word, and the 1998 rape is too old to charge. Benson calls departments nationwide and hits huge backlogs of untested kits: in Detroit, one victim’s kit was lost when a precinct burned, and in Chicago one kit is empty and another moldy. In Los Angeles, Detective Rex Winters takes her to Harris’s storage locker, filled with victims’ belongings and years of video of Vicki. Vicki’s 2000 kit yields only degraded DNA, and California’s time limit has passed. At a New York hearing, Judge Elizabeth Donnelly rules the out-of-state sample too weak to support Vicki’s identification and dismisses the case.
Spoiler, the ending: Reflecting on the untested evidence, Benson asks Vicki about 1998. Vicki recalls that Harris kept her bound with duct tape into the next day and that officers bagged the tape. With it, the detectives arrest Harris for first-degree kidnapping, which carries no statute of limitations. As Harris pleads that he loves her, Vicki tells him to be good and behave.
Why it stands out
- Skeet Ulrich appears as Detective Rex Winters from Law & Order: LA, and the episode aired as the lead-in to that series’ premiere on NBC.
- Mariska Hargitay filmed the Los Angeles scenes while in town for the 2010 Emmy Awards, the first time SVU shot on the West Coast.
- Jennifer Love Hewitt guest-stars as Vicki Sayers; showrunner Neal Baer said the story reflected Hargitay’s campaign to clear untested rape kits.