Mea Culpa (Season 20, Episode 9)
Premise: Stone is accused of a rape from his baseball days and asks SVU to investigate him, splitting the squad until the truth about that night emerges.
- Air date
- Season/Episode
- Season 20, Episode 9
- Starring
- Lt. Olivia Benson (Mariska Hargitay), Sgt. Odafin “Fin” Tutuola (Ice-T), Det. Amanda Rollins (Kelli Giddish), Det. Dominick “Sonny” Carisi Jr. (Peter Scanavino), ADA Peter Stone (Philip Winchester)
- Guest stars
- Alexandra Breckenridge as Sarah Kent, Kevin Kane as Gary Kent, Austin Peck as Reggie Gregg, George Newbern as Dr. Al Pollack, Tessa Albertson as Alicia Beck
- Director
- Mariska Hargitay
- Writers
- Michael Chernuchin & Julie Martin
Summary
“Mea Culpa” opens as Stone wins a remand for Roger Madden, charged with raping Alicia Beck when she was too drunk to consent. That night a fan who remembers Stone from his years pitching for the Chicago Cubs buys him a drink, but a woman recognizes him, slaps him and says he raped her. The next morning Stone tells Fin that 12 years earlier, after a game against the Mets late in the season, several ballplayers and women went back to his hotel room; he recalls kissing her, then waking up alone. Fin finds her through Reggie Gregg (called Griggs in the episode), a former major league pitcher who was at the bar that night and later married her friend Wanda. The woman, Sarah Kent, shuts the door on Fin. Meanwhile Dr. Al Pollack asks the pregnant Rollins to move in with him, and Carisi questions whether she can trust him.
At Madden’s trial, Alicia admits she remembers little of the assault, and the defense suggests she may have consented and forgotten. Stone then asks Benson to open an investigation into himself, and the squad is divided. Sarah tells Benson she kissed Stone, passed out and woke naked, sure she had had sex she never agreed to; she had never told her husband, Gary, who insists on pressing charges. Benson arrests Stone, who is released on his own recognizance. Gary then confronts Stone in a bar, clears out the customers at gunpoint and holds him there. Sarah and their daughter, Emma, speak to Gary by phone, and he walks out to his family. The gun was unloaded, and Stone declines to press charges.
Benson learns that Emma was born eight and a half months after the night in question. Sarah admits that she and Gary had been struggling to conceive, that Wanda and Reggie had also gone to the room, and that she has spent years afraid Stone was Emma’s father. Detectives ask Reggie to help Stone by lying that he heard Sarah consent; when he readily agrees, they press him on whether Stone had passed out; he insists Sarah was all over him but concedes that she was too drunk to know what was happening.
Spoiler, the ending: Reggie is arrested for first-degree rape and starts negotiating a deal, and the charges against Stone are dropped. A DNA test shows that Gary is Emma’s father. Stone still blames himself for bringing Sarah to the room. Benson apologizes for seeming to doubt him, and Stone admits that for a moment he doubted himself. No verdict in Madden’s case is shown.
Why it stands out
- Mariska Hargitay directs the episode, her sixth as director on the series.
- Kevin Kane, who plays Gary Kent, later joins the cast as Det. Terry Bruno.
- The story draws on Stone’s past as a pitcher for the Chicago Cubs.