Patrimonial Burden (Season 17, Episode 7)
Premise: When the 13-year-old daughter of a famous religious reality-TV family turns up pregnant, SVU uncovers abuse that her family and church have kept hidden.
- Air date
- Season/Episode
- Season 17, Episode 7
- 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
- Geneva Carr as Pam Baker, Christopher Sieber as Frank Baker, Ryan Devlin as Pastor Gregory Eldon, Victoria Leigh as Lane Baker, Chris Elliott as Pete Matthews
- Ripped from the headlines
- Inspired by the 2015 molestation scandal involving Josh Duggar, the eldest son of a large reality-TV family, who as a young teenager had molested girls including his sisters; the revelations led to the cancellation of the family’s show, 19 Kids and Counting.
- Director
- Martha Mitchell
- Writers
- Story: Warren Leight & Julie Martin & Brianna Yellen; Teleplay: Jill Abbinanti & Céline C. Robinson
Summary
“Patrimonial Burden” follows the Bakers, a devout family of ten children with their own reality show, who come from upstate Allanville to New York for a virtue ball where 13-year-old Lane pledges to stay chaste until marriage. Lane faints on the dance floor, and doctors find she is three months pregnant. Her parents, Frank and Pam, refuse to let detectives near her, and their pastor and lawyer, Gregory Eldon, says the hometown police will handle it. Rollins, on desk duty, finds on the family blog that Lane was in East Harlem on a church mission in July, so the pregnancy likely began in New York, and Benson keeps the case over Dodds’s doubts.
Dodds and Fin bring the family to the squad room. Carisi keeps the younger children busy, and Lane, allowed to write the name instead of saying it, accuses the show’s cameraman, Pete Matthews. Pete has had a vasectomy; his footage, which includes shots of the teenage daughters undressing, shows Lane’s older brother, Graham, groping their sister Summer three years earlier. Upstate, a judge who is also a church elder denies sentencing Graham to a reform camp, a local officer slips the detectives Graham’s sealed juvenile record of forcible-touching complaints, and Eldon announces that Graham has gone on a mission to Ecuador. Watching old episodes, Rollins notices that Pam hid her last pregnancy, with two-year-old Tate, for months and suspects Summer is Tate’s real mother.
Tate drooled on Carisi’s jacket, and DNA tech Susan Chung finds Baker family DNA on the maternal side but none on the paternal side, so Graham is not the father. Rollins collapses with back pain and is put on bed rest. A 2012 photo places Eldon with Summer at the same Harlem mission, and his DNA, taken by warrant, matches Tate’s father. The detectives find him in the middle of marrying Lane, just turned 14, with her parents’ consent and Judge Elias Barnes officiating.
Spoiler, the ending: Told about the DNA, Pam learns that Eldon let the family believe Graham was to blame. She turns on him and says she, Lane and Summer will all testify. Eldon is arrested for the statutory rape of both girls and later agrees to plead guilty to multiple counts. Dodds admits he did not expect SVU to be pulling predators out of churches, and Benson replies that most rapists find victims among people who trust them.
Why it stands out
- Christopher Sieber and Geneva Carr play the Baker parents; it is Carr’s third different character on the series.
- Chris Elliott, who plays the family’s cameraman, previously guest-starred in the Season 10 episode “Lunacy.”