Catfishing Teacher (Season 17, Episode 10)
Premise: A missing 15-year-old seems to have run off with a teacher who has been sleeping with students, but SVU finds he was lured away by his wrestling coach.
- Air date
- Season/Episode
- Season 17, Episode 10
- Starring
- Lt. Olivia Benson (Mariska Hargitay), Det. Odafin “Fin” Tutuola (Ice-T), Det. Amanda Rollins (Kelli Giddish), Det. Dominick “Sonny” Carisi Jr. (Peter Scanavino), Sgt. Mike Dodds (Andy Karl)
- Guest stars
- Michael Gaston as Donald Bazinski, Kelli Barrett as Phoebe Burnap, Noah Fleiss as Nat Dennehy, Ted Sutherland as Zack Foster, Robert Sean Leonard as ADA Kenneth O’Dwyer
- Director
- Michael Slovis
- Writers
- Story: Brianna Yellen; Written by: Kevin Fox
Summary
“Catfishing Teacher” opens with Rollins on maternity leave with her six-week-old daughter, Jesse, while Dodds, writing performance reviews, questions Carisi’s focus and Rollins’s commitment and says Fin passes off cases; Benson defends all three. When Fin tries to hand a new case to Dodds and Carisi, Benson sends him with Dodds. Zack Foster, 15, equipment manager of the wrestling team at River Park Charter High, has been gone for two days. His divorced parents, Serena and Cole, trade blame until Serena, who can read his messages, finds explicit texts from a woman telling him to meet her at Jamaica Station with his passport.
The texts lead to two wrestlers, Travis Barstow and Jordan Messina, and one of them admits that English teacher Phoebe Burnap has been having sex with him in a supply closet for grades. Her credit card leads the squad to a Vermont ski lodge, where they find her not with Zack but with David Faulkner, a 21-year-old former student she has just married; their alibi holds. In a proffer session arranged by her lawyer, Steve Roth, Burnap says Jordan told wrestling coach Donald Bazinski about her, and Jordan admits he sent the coach her photos. Bazinski’s Floral Park home holds pictures of many boys. Zack’s parents recognize one, Nat Dennehy (called Nat Phelps in the episode), who recalls the coach describing a place in Pennsylvania near a store with a Viking statue.
A state trooper lures Bazinski out of his cabin near a reservoir, and the detectives find Zack inside, drugged with alcohol and Rohypnol. Zack refuses a rape kit but tells Benson and Carisi that he woke in the cabin to the coach assaulting him. Bazinski insists he rescued a runaway. ADA Kenneth O’Dwyer charges him with kidnapping and first-degree rape, and he is freed on $500,000 bail with a monitor. Zack’s parents refuse to let him testify, and Nat and the other victims will not come forward.
Spoiler, the ending: Nat then walks into the squad room with a recording: he went to Bazinski’s house, tortured him into confessing and naming his victims, and left him bleeding. Bazinski dies on the way to the hospital. Nat is arrested for murder. Benson blames the squad for pushing him, but O’Dwyer calls the killing premeditated and plans to charge first-degree murder, telling her that Nat’s life ended when he was 15.
Why it stands out
- The first episode of 2016, it aired on January 6 after a seven-week break.
- Robert Sean Leonard plays ADA Kenneth O’Dwyer, one of the season’s recurring roles, and Jeanine Pirro appears as the arraignment judge, credited as Judge Jeanine Pirro.