Street Revenge (Season 13, Episode 19)
Premise: As SVU hunts a serial rapist in West Soho, costumed vigilantes and a hostile reporter take the case into the streets.
- Air date
- Season/Episode
- Season 13, Episode 19
- Starring
- Det. Olivia Benson (Mariska Hargitay), Sgt. John Munch (Richard Belzer), Det. Odafin “Fin” Tutuola (Ice-T), Det. Nick Amaro (Danny Pino), Det. Amanda Rollins (Kelli Giddish), Capt. Donald Cragen (Dann Florek)
- Guest stars
- Michael Rispoli as Henry Burzecki, Hani Furstenberg as Leslie Adams, Keir O’Donnell as Stuart, Gavin Lee as Dennis Griscomb, Laura Benanti as Maria Grazie
- Director
- Arthur W. Forney
- Writers
- Story: Julie Martin; Story & teleplay: David Matthews
Summary
“Street Revenge” opens after the West Soho rapist’s fifth attack: he shoves women down from behind, cuts off a lock of hair and asks whether they think they are special. Reporter Dennis Griscomb mocks the police on air, and Cragen takes Benson to an angry community meeting. Then a man in superhero gear stops an attack on Claire Grant and punches her assailant hard enough to leave blood behind. A MetroCard swiped at the Houston Street station leads Amaro and Rollins through a Board of Education transit benefit to May Chen and her son, Andy, 20, who has a black eye and a broken nose. He runs, and Benson hits him when he swings at her.
Andy’s DNA ties him to Claire, but his bragging about the other victims gets them wrong, so he is a copycat. Griscomb then receives a letter from the real rapist full of unreleased details and refuses to hand it over, citing the First Amendment. Andy makes bail, and five masked vigilantes calling themselves the Justice League of New York beat him in the street as onlookers cheer. Residents call a “No More Fear” slut walk; their movement is centered on the restaurant of Henry Burzecki, an outspoken critic of the police.
The night of the march, detectives find Leslie Adams, known as Fantastica, knocked out and raped on a rooftop, her hair cut, and her patrol partner, Stuart, known as 12:19, stabbed in the shoulder. Stuart says he pulled a stocky white man off her. At Henry’s restaurant the detectives notice curved poultry shears. After vigilantes beat Henry, six locks of hair turn up in his car, and Stuart now says he recognized Henry’s voice. Leslie’s rape kit holds Henry’s DNA, but he admits a secret affair with her, and Leslie, a pastry chef and his wife’s sister back up his alibis for the other attacks. Meanwhile Amaro, suspecting his wife, Maria, drives to Philadelphia and hits Capt. Jason Harris, a man from her unit. Maria confronts him at the squad and reveals that the brownstone where he followed her is her psychiatrist’s office.
Spoiler, the ending: Warner says Stuart’s wound could have been self-inflicted. On the rooftop, Amaro and Rollins have Stuart act out the struggle; he says the attacker struck left-handed, but the wound fits his own right hand. The detectives point out that the rapes began a week after Leslie laughed off Stuart’s warnings, and Amaro accuses him of striking her with a brick out of jealousy after she left the march with Henry, and of planting the hair. Stuart says he never meant to hurt anyone and only wanted Leslie to see him as a hero, and the episode ends there.
Why it stands out
- Laura Benanti continues as Amaro’s wife, Maria, a role that began in “Spiraling Down”; here her closeness to a fellow member of her unit in Iraq strains the marriage.
- The plot draws on a protest of its day: the squad polices a slut walk, a march against victim blaming that a character notes began in Toronto, and a detective likens the vigilantes’ attack on Andy Chen to the shooting of Trayvon Martin in Florida.