Unintended Consequences (Season 19, Episode 6)
Premise: A runaway from an exclusive rehab dies of a fentanyl overdose after being raped, and SVU finds the center and a sober house recycling addicted girls for insurance money.
- Air date
- Season/Episode
- Season 19, Episode 6
- 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 Rafael Barba (Raúl Esparza)
- Guest stars
- Peter Scolari as Dr. Dennis Barkley, Annie Corley as Rosemary Taylor, Brooke Shields as Sheila Porter, Christiane Noll as Sarah Curtis, Noah Gaynor as Anthony Parker
- Director
- Jonathan Herron
- Writers
- Story: Brianna Yellen & Robert Brooks Cohen & Céline C. Robinson & Elizabeth Rinehart; Written by: Elizabeth Rinehart
Summary
“Unintended Consequences” opens with Sheila Porter reading Noah a bedtime story, until Benson is called out to the East Village, where a teenage girl lies dead. The medical examiner finds she was sexually assaulted before she died, and her heroin was laced with fentanyl. A dealer known as Hackapulco points the squad to a man with a mustache, Tom Higgins, who survived his own overdose that night and knows the girl only as Natalie but knows where she lives. Her parents, Sarah and Glen Curtis, say she is 15, that painkillers prescribed after ankle surgery led her to heroin and that she was supposed to be at Lux, a treatment center for girls in Bronxville.
Lux founder Dr. Dennis Barkley says Natalie simply walked out, and social worker Rosemary Taylor cites confidentiality. Natalie was two months pregnant, and the fetus and the rape kit share a DNA profile. Over coffee, Sheila gives Benson a baseball glove that belonged to Noah’s mother, Ellie, and talks about losing her daughter to drugs; Benson, who has not yet told Noah about Ellie, admits to Rollins that Sheila is not who she feared. No male Lux employee matches the DNA, and a judge rules that the Curtises signed their parental rights over to Lux and refuses to release her file.
Posing as a social worker weighing a career change, Rollins gets Rosemary to take her on as an assistant and finds that new patient Kristi Martin’s insurer was billed $50,000 for electroconvulsive therapy that never happened. Because that search was illegal, the squad finds a lawful route: Rosemary’s former assistant says Natalie had returned to Lux after a stay at Altbrook, a sober house in Greenpoint. There the detectives find counselor Anthony Parker, 19, with a 16-year-old resident. Paternity tests show he fathered Natalie’s child, and he admits giving girls drugs for sex, but since he is within four years of their ages, Barba has no rape case. Barkley, flanked by his lawyer, insists his tests are needed and predicts no jury will believe addicts.
Rollins tells Rosemary who she is. Rosemary, whose own daughter died of an overdose, says Altbrook staff picked girls up from Lux, and the link is Anthony, whom Barkley put in charge. Barkley’s billing quadrupled to $40 million, and Barba prepares a state racketeering case.
Spoiler, the ending: Rosemary then calls Rollins to an address in Bronxville, where Rollins and Carisi find him overdosing. Rosemary has injected him with fentanyl, says Narcan will not save him and waits to be arrested. That Saturday, Benson leaves Noah with Sheila while she goes to work.
Why it stands out
- Broadway actress Christiane Noll guest-stars as Natalie’s mother, Sarah Curtis, in what she called her first big guest-starring role.
- Peter Scolari plays Lux founder Dr. Dennis Barkley.
- Brooke Shields continues her recurring role as Sheila Porter, Noah’s grandmother, first revealed at the end of the season’s third episode, “Contrapasso.”