Branded (Season 12, Episode 6)
Premise: Revenge attacks on three men by a gifted hacker uncover a gang rape at a summer camp 14 years earlier, and the unit’s new ADA must prosecute the victim.
- Air date
- Season/Episode
- Season 12, Episode 6
- Starring
- Det. Olivia Benson (Mariska Hargitay), Det. Elliot Stabler (Christopher Meloni), Det. Odafin “Fin” Tutuola (Ice-T), Capt. Donald Cragen (Dann Florek), ADA Gillian Hardwicke (Melissa Sagemiller), Dr. George Huang (BD Wong), TARU Ruben Morales (Joel de la Fuente)
- Guest stars
- Bess Rous as Camille Walters, Michael Gladis as Bill Dixon, Kevin Alejandro as Victor Ramos, Jason Wiles as Alexander Gammon, David Alan Grier as Jeremy Swift
- Director
- Peter Leto
- Writers
- Chris Brancato
Summary
“Branded” opens on family night, when Joyce Dixon comes home to find her husband, Bill, who makes leather goods, stripped and bound on their floor. Benson and Stabler find the word “ruiner” burned into his chest with a heated wire hanger; he was knocked out with ketamine injected into his neck and sexually assaulted with pieces from a board game. His only enemy, an activist who fought his snakeskin belts, has an alibi. A tip from Fin shows the attacker had a box shipped to the building’s storeroom to get past the doorman, using a delivery order placed by a skilled hacker. Then tax accountant Victor Ramos is found bound and branded “traitor.”
Huang thinks men who share a secret may reach out to each other, and Fin tails Ramos to a heated meeting with Dixon and importer Alexander Gammon, who calls them business contacts. A stakeout at Gammon’s apartment catches Camille Walters, a gifted former foster child who works at the freight company, as she prepares to brand Stabler, who is waiting in Gammon’s place. All three men deny knowing her. New ADA Gillian Hardwicke, new from Brooklyn, says she cannot prove the first two attacks, since phone and store records put Camille elsewhere, and Gammon will not press charges. A photo places Camille at a 1996 summer camp where all three men worked, and camp director Margaret Holmes recalls finding her dazed on the dock after the Fourth of July fireworks. Camille tells Benson the men raped her that night when she was 14, and that weeks ago a laugh she heard near Central Park convinced her she had found the daughter she gave up at birth.
The statute of limitations on the rape has run out, and Hardwicke takes Camille to trial on her taped confession, cutting the parts about the rape. When Benson protests from the witness stand, the judge threatens her with contempt. Dixon testifies that Camille flirted with him, and Ramos, despite Stabler’s appeal, backs him. Benson accuses Hardwicke of caring only about her conviction rate, but Hardwicke then quietly asks her to deliver an envelope to Camille’s lawyer, Jeremy Swift.
Spoiler, the ending: Swift calls Hannah Milner, an adopted teenager whose DNA shows she is Camille’s daughter, and she points past Gammon to Ramos as her father. Ramos breaks down, admits all three men raped Camille and says Gammon has paid them for years to stay quiet and has paid off other women he raped. Dixon and Ramos face perjury charges, and women whose cases are not time-barred return Gammon’s money and press charges against him. Camille, left facing sentencing on two minor trespass counts, meets Hannah with Benson’s help.
Why it stands out
- Melissa Sagemiller makes her first appearance as ADA Gillian Hardwicke, who joins the unit from Brooklyn; she had played a different character, Becky Sorenson, in the series’ first season.
- David Alan Grier plays defense attorney Jeremy Swift, Michael Gladis and Kevin Alejandro play the first two victims, and Odeya Rush plays Hannah Milner.