Consent (Season 2, Episode 10)
Premise: A college student is drugged and raped after a fraternity party, and the detectives uncover a revenge plot by her sorority sisters while struggling to prove anyone knew she could not consent.
- Air date
- Season/Episode
- Season 2, Episode 10
- Starring
- Det. Olivia Benson (Mariska Hargitay), Det. Elliot Stabler (Christopher Meloni), Det. John Munch (Richard Belzer), Det. Odafin “Fin” Tutuola (Ice-T), Capt. Donald Cragen (Dann Florek), ADA Alexandra Cabot (Stephanie March)
- Guest stars
- Tammy Blanchard as Kelly D’Leah, Zak Orth as Wally Parker, Chris Beetem as Joe Templeton Jr., Marika Dominczyk as Tess Michner, Michelle Monaghan as Dana Kimble
- Director
- James Quinn
- Writers
- Story: Dawn DeNoon & Lisa Marie Petersen & Robert F. Campbell & Jonathan Greene; Written by: Jeff Eckerle
Summary
“Consent” begins when two joggers find Kelly D’Leah, a Hanford student, barely conscious in campus bushes, her underwear missing. At the hospital she balks at finishing the rape exam and says she was a virgin; the doctor finds semen and injuries. Her roommate, Dana Kimble, says Kelly went out with sorority sisters Tess Michner and Jodie Tomlinson, who left her at the Beta Lambda house with Joe Templeton Jr. and Hank Ludlow. A homeless man, Harry, admits taking her cash and cards as she lay passed out, but his blood type rules him out.
Kelly recalls margaritas at a bar and games in Joe’s room, then nothing. Her friends say she was all over Joe, and Joe says she threw up, so he left her on his bed and slept downstairs. A toxicology screen then finds GHB, a drug used to incapacitate rape victims. A bartender says Joe bets on which women he can take home, and Dean Geraldine Richter, who offered Kelly a campus hearing instead of a prosecution, withholds student records. A campus officer, Nick Monroe, steers Munch and Fin to swimmer Mandy Schumacher, who says Joe raped her when she was drunk; the school put him on probation. Kelly also has gonorrhea.
A subpoena opens the files, and a search of Joe’s room turns up Kelly’s blood on the sheets, her underwear and an eyedropper of unusually pure, lab-made GHB. Joe, who has gonorrhea, and Hank are arrested, and Joe’s father, a powerful alumnus, clashes with Cragen. Hank says Tess and Jodie kept topping up Kelly’s beer and called it a love potion. Dana explains that Tess, Joe’s former girlfriend, blamed Kelly when he dropped her, then learned she had gonorrhea, and was later seen mixing chemicals from her biochemistry notes. Both women are charged, and Jodie’s lawyer, James Woodrow, ends her questioning.
The semen matches neither Joe nor Hank. Hairs on a scarf printed with fish lead to Wally Parker, a fraternity brother nicknamed Walleye, who admits taking the crying Kelly to his room and having sex with her, insisting she kissed him and he never knew she was drugged. Cabot keeps him as a defendant. Kelly testifies to the grand jury, and Wally exercises his right to address it; questioned by Cabot, he concedes Kelly never said she wanted sex.
Spoiler, the ending: The grand jury indicts Tess and Jodie for drug possession but brings no charges against Wally or Joe: the jurors accepted that Kelly was drugged but not that the men knew. The dean expels the students involved. Kelly, who never took the emergency contraception, says she is afraid she may be pregnant and has not yet told her parents.
Why it stands out
- Tammy Blanchard, who won an Emmy Award for playing the teenage Judy Garland in the 2001 miniseries “Life with Judy Garland: Me and My Shadows,” guest-stars as Kelly D’Leah.
- Michelle Monaghan plays Kelly’s roommate, Dana Kimble, and Elizabeth Hendrickson plays Mandy Schumacher, a student who says Joe raped her the previous semester.