Children of Wolves (Season 25, Episode 9)
Premise: Four young men attack two teenage girls in a Manhattan park and take one of them, while Benson faces her son’s questions about his own violent beginnings.
- Air date
- Season/Episode
- Season 25, Episode 9
- Starring
- Capt. Olivia Benson (Mariska Hargitay), Det. Joe Velasco (Octavio Pisano), Det. Terry Bruno (Kevin Kane), Capt. Renee Curry (Aimé Donna Kelly), ADA Dominick “Sonny” Carisi Jr. (Peter Scanavino)
- Guest stars
- Kerry Butler as Denise Lynch, Amalina Ace as Sydney Lynch, Reilly Walters as Seth Piper, Shannon Stowe as Mona Piper, Ryan Buggle as Noah Porter-Benson
- Director
- Mariska Hargitay
- Writers
- Story: Gabriel Vallejo; Written by: David Graziano & Julie Martin
Summary
“Children of Wolves” opens with Benson putting Noah to bed after he admits he has been googling her, finding articles about William Lewis and Johnny D, and going through her private boxes, where papers name Johnny D as his father. She tells him it is complicated and reads him “Little Red Riding Hood.” That night four young men corner Rosie Meadows and her best friend, Sydney Lynch, in Fort Tryon Park, and Rosie is found the next morning naked and unconscious near a playground, a belt around her neck. Carisi tells Benson that the case against George Brouchard, Maddie Flynn’s kidnapper, has lost a key witness: the man who bought Maddie was beaten to death at Rikers. That leaves Maddie, 15 and drugged in captivity, as the main witness; Benson offers to testify.
Rosie, on a ventilator after a gang rape, is identified by her nanny, Marva James; she was sleeping over with Sydney. Sydney calls her stepmother, Denise, claiming to be at a friend’s house, and Benson hears fear in her voice. Lip gloss Curry found on a slide is Sydney’s shade, and Rosie’s kit holds semen from four males whom DNA methylation places in their teens. Sydney’s phone last pinged near a City Island yacht club, where the squad, with Carisi in a vest, searches shrink-wrapped boats and finds her phone, Rosie’s red hoodie and the four men’s DNA in one cabin. None of the four is in the system.
A neighbor photographs a girl on the roof of an empty townhouse. The exterminator who holds its keys, Mona Piper, says her son Seth, 18, has been gone two days. With snipers in position, Benson has Mona call Seth, then talks him into surrendering, and Sydney comes out without serious physical injury. Rosie’s parents take her off life support. Benson and Velasco drive Seth to the park for a forensic reenactment and press him until he apologizes; then Benson decides the story is Sydney’s to tell. Sydney says she froze, tried to help, fled in a circle back into the group, was choked unconscious by Seth and woke on a boat, where the men forced her to call home and abused her.
Spoiler, the ending: Seth calls the assaults consensual and blames his friends, who blame one another and ask for lawyers. Carisi warns that Seth’s lawyer may claim coercion, but Nassau County SVU matches the four men’s DNA to six unsolved pack rapes on Long Island, whose victims are willing to testify, and Carisi takes it to the DA; no trial is shown. Curry notes that Benson is lucky Curry has left IAB. At home, Benson begins telling Noah the story of his birth mother, Ellie.
Why it stands out
- Mariska Hargitay directed the episode.
- Noah’s questions reach back to his biological father, Johnny D, from the season 16 episodes “Undercover Mother” and “Surrendering Noah.”
- The Brouchard subplot continues the Maddie Flynn kidnapping, which began in the season premiere and in which Maddie was found in “Zone Rouge,” and leads into the next episode’s trial.