The Darkest Journey Home (Season 21, Episode 2)
Premise: A young woman who blacked out on a night of heavy drinking believes she was raped after a ride home, and Benson uses a new interviewing technique to help her remember.
- Air date
- Season/Episode
- Season 21, Episode 2
- Starring
- Capt. Olivia Benson (Mariska Hargitay), Sgt. Odafin “Fin” Tutuola (Ice-T), Det. Amanda Rollins (Kelli Giddish), ADA Dominick “Sonny” Carisi Jr. (Peter Scanavino)
- Guest stars
- Ariel Winter as Raegan James, Amy Hargreaves as Dr. Alexis Hanover, Mark Puchinsky as Besnick “Nick” Pavlovic, Teo Rapp-Olsson as Julius, Nick Cordero as Anthony Marino
- Director
- Jean de Segonzac
- Writers
- Julie Martin & Warren Leight
Summary
“The Darkest Journey Home” opens with Benson, newly a captain, sitting through a trauma-informed interviewing course that the new deputy chief has made mandatory; asked to revisit a trauma, she recalls an attacker taping her mouth in her own apartment. After a heavy night out with two friends, Raegan James takes a QuikRide shared with another passenger, Julius, and driven by a man named Nick. The next day she comes to SVU convinced she was raped but remembering almost nothing, and her app shows a $140 trip that ended in Sheepshead Bay rather than at her apartment. She refuses to go to Mount Sinai, where her fiancé, Dr. Richard Rayburn, is a resident. Her exam shows she was held down and badly hurt, and the kit turns up alcohol, Xanax and several other drugs, plus semen from two men, neither of them Richard.
Nick and Julius both describe Raegan as out of control, her friends call her a blackout drinker who embellishes, and Benson catches her in lies about her family. Because Carisi doubts there is probable cause for DNA warrants, Rollins tricks Julius into sipping from her straw. One semen sample belongs to Dennis Callahan, a former boss Raegan admits she had oral sex with that afternoon, and she storms off when Benson presses her. Benson wins her back and they retrace the night: the smell of fryers, gravel under bare feet and low tide lead them to a marina near a Sheepshead Bay crab house, where Raegan remembers men singing and mocking her aboard a boat but cannot bring herself to go inside. Rollins and Fin also take the course, each reliving a painful memory.
The boat belongs to Anthony Marino, whose restaurant once employed Julius and whom Julius phoned from the car. Raegan then recalls an older man with a Corsican flag tattoo, which leads to Frank Corso’s arrest. DNA puts all four men on the boat, though Marino’s is not in the rape kit. Unsure how Raegan will hold up on the stand, Carisi offers Marino a deal; Marino admits he was aboard but says he left, and Carisi refuses to let him testify to a cover story his lawyer then proposes. Told what Marino said, Nick blames Julius, says Marino tried and failed to rape her, and insists he only put her shoes back on and drove her home, then agrees to write it all down.
Spoiler, the ending: With Marino turning first and Nick then implicating Marino and Julius, the case is headed for guilty pleas rather than a trial. Raegan is unimpressed, and when she asks how Benson can be sure she will survive, Benson tells her that she did.
Why it stands out
- Ariel Winter guest-stars as Raegan James.
- Amy Hargreaves begins a recurring role as Dr. Alexis Hanover, the psychologist who teaches the squad trauma-informed interviewing by having them recall past traumas of their own.
- Benson’s first episode credited as captain, after her promotion at the end of the season premiere.