Dare (Season 19, Episode 16)
Premise: When a girl dies after a schoolyard dare, SVU discovers that her surgeon harvested her organs without her parents’ consent, as she has done for dozens of other children.
- Air date
- Season/Episode
- Season 19, Episode 16
- Starring
- Lt. Olivia Benson (Mariska Hargitay), Det. Odafin “Fin” Tutuola (Ice-T), Det. Amanda Rollins (Kelli Giddish), Det. Dominick “Sonny” Carisi Jr. (Peter Scanavino), ADA Peter Stone (Philip Winchester)
- Guest stars
- Janel Moloney as Dr. Lorraine Franchella, Jenn Gambatese as Meredith Bergkamp, Alfredo Narciso as Dylan Bergkamp, Callie Thorne as Nikki Staines, Joey Curtis-Green as Harry Lonegan
- Director
- Christopher Misiano
- Writers
- Story: Brianna Yellen & Robert Brooks Cohen & Céline C. Robinson & Elizabeth Rinehart; Written by: Céline C. Robinson & Richard Sweren
Summary
“Dare” begins when 13-year-old basketball player Zoe Bergkamp goes missing after a team outing. Her friends Lily Winterburn and Lisa Dixon admit they dared her to kiss a stranger, and a bike-share record leads the squad to David Gidumal, who says Zoe kissed his cheek and ran back inside. Benson has the recreation center searched and finds Zoe unconscious in her underwear behind the gym bleachers. The girls confess to a game called Red Parrot: they threw Zoe’s clothes onto the bleachers, ran off as she climbed after them, and then kept the prank secret to stay out of trouble. Zoe dies in surgery from swelling of the brain.
Fetching Zoe’s ring for her mother, the detectives notice an incision down the girl’s chest. Surgeon Lorraine Franchella admits she removed Zoe’s kidneys, liver and heart for transplant without asking the parents, Meredith and Dylan, because they might have refused. The heart is in a helicopter on the roof, bound for a boy in Buffalo who has waited three years. Meredith will not let it go, and Benson keeps the cooler despite Franchella’s pleas. The squad then finds 31 families whose children’s organs Franchella took without consent; every one of their donor forms is in her handwriting, and she is arrested for forgery.
At trial, defense attorney Nikki Staines argues necessity. Meredith testifies that the signature is not hers and that Benson pressed her to give up the heart. The Buffalo boy, Harry Lonegan, describes his failing heart and the transplant that never came, and Dylan later apologizes to him. Franchella testifies that she presumes consent, as many European countries do, and that all 31 transplants succeeded. The detectives learn that her yearly donation to a children’s heart fund honors her son, Benjamin, who died in 2006 waiting for a heart, and Stone asks whether she would have taken Benjamin’s heart. She does not answer.
Spoiler, the ending: The jury convicts Franchella of second-degree forgery on all 32 counts. Stone, who earlier told Benson that his father died in a hospital while he was away from the bedside, wants prison time to set an example; Benson points out that Franchella will lose her medical license anyway and suggests he is making up for that day. Then word comes that Harry Lonegan has died. The sentence is not shown.
Why it stands out
- Janel Moloney guest stars as pediatric surgeon Lorraine Franchella, with Callie Thorne as defense attorney Nikki Staines.
- Stone tells Benson about his father’s death in a New York hospital; his sister, Pamela, is introduced in the next episode.