Dutch Tears (Season 24, Episode 14)
Premise: A man Fin arrested as a teenager 23 years ago confronts him at gunpoint and demands justice for his rape in a city holding cell.
- Air date
- Season/Episode
- Season 24, Episode 14
- Starring
- Capt. Olivia Benson (Mariska Hargitay), Sgt. Odafin “Fin” Tutuola (Ice-T), Det. Terry Bruno (Kevin Kane), ADA Dominick “Sonny” Carisi Jr. (Peter Scanavino)
- Guest stars
- Richard Cabral as Ivan “Dutch” Hernandez, Mark Borkowski as Pete Ryan, Marc Basil as Virgil “The Hangman” Hatton, Cady McClain as Patty Ryan, Sophie Hoyt as Tara James
- Director
- Bethany Rooney
- Writers
- Story: Kathy Dobie & Nolan Dunbar; Written by: Monet Hurst-Mendoza & Kathy Dobie & Gabriel Vallejo
Summary
“Dutch Tears” opens as Benson toasts Fin, winner of the Harlem Heart Award, then drives him home after a night of drinking with old colleagues. Inside, Ivan “Dutch” Hernandez is waiting with a gun. Twenty-three years earlier, Fin and his Narcotics partner, Dub Nichols, arrested the 17-year-old Dutch with ecstasy on East 12th Street; Fin tackled him and Nichols dislocated his shoulder. That night in a holding cell at the Tombs, Dutch says, a guard let in a huge man who raped him and burned an H into his skin with a heated paper clip; marked by the brand, he was raped repeatedly upstate. He wants the man he calls Cream Cheese, and the guard.
Fin promises to help and calls in Bruno. From old staff photos Dutch picks out Pete Ryan, now a captain at Rikers. Ryan brushes off Fin and Bruno at his home, but his wife, Patty, drives straight to a sober living house. Benson joins them; the man Patty visited claims she wanted a sponsor, and his roommate bolts and escapes Bruno. Dutch thinks it was his attacker. The roommate is Virgil Hatton, but Dutch cannot pick him from old mug shots with any certainty. Fin tells Bruno his humor recalls an old partner who retired to Baltimore.
Questioned with his lawyer, Freddo, Ryan faces statements from fellow officers that he smuggled drugs and allowed rapes, and a high school photo of him with his best friend, Hatton. He admits he used the big inmate, known as the Hangman, to keep order, and names a Lower East Side bar where Hatton hides out. Carisi needs a firm identification, so a fire marshal empties the bar over a supposed gas leak while Dutch watches from a van with Fin and Carisi. Dutch explains Dutch tears, glass drops that survive a hammer blow but shatter if their thin tails are touched, and says he means himself. He cannot be sure in the dark until an undercover officer asks Hatton for a light and the flame shows his face. Dutch then jumps out and grabs Hatton, and Fin talks him into letting go.
Spoiler, the ending: Carisi charges Hatton and Ryan with first-degree rape; Dutch faces a weapons charge, which Carisi expects to end in probation and court-ordered therapy. Fin tells Benson he hurt more than the boy’s arm all those years ago, and she tells him that over the past 12 hours he did everything right. With Fin beside him, Dutch meets his grown daughter, Tara, who never visited him in prison, and the episode ends with Fin and Bruno sharing sandwiches as Fin jokes that Munch barely ate.
Why it stands out
- Benson’s toast sums up Fin’s history: raised in Harlem, he saw his mother murdered at age six and worked Narcotics before coming to SVU.
- Fin tells Bruno that his old partner John Munch moved back to Baltimore, met a rabbi and bought back his old cop bar.
- Richard Belzer, who played Munch, died three days after the episode aired.