Popular (Season 3, Episode 16)
Premise: Stabler pursues a 14-year-old’s unreported rape against her wishes and uncovers junior high parties where sex is traded for beer and drugs.
- Air date
- Season/Episode
- Season 3, Episode 16
- 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
- Brittany Slattery as Cynthia Wilmont, Isabel Gillies as Kathy Stabler, Billy Kay as Tommy Kessler, Jason Fuchs as Nick Radsen, Christopher Orr as Ross McKenzie
- Director
- Jean de Segonzac
- Writers
- Story: Kathy Ebel; Story & teleplay: Stephen Belber
Summary
“Popular” starts at the Stabler home, where Kathy, while dealing with daughter Kathleen’s slipping grades, mentions that a nurse friend examined a 14-year-old girl who says a teacher raped her but will not tell the police or her parents. The nurse, Carol Porter, refuses to give Stabler a name, so Benson checks the hospital sign-in log and a junior high absence list points to eighth grader Cynthia Wilmont. Cragen orders the detectives to drop it unless the girl comes forward. In the school nurse’s office, Cynthia denies anything happened and is angry that the nurse broke her promise, and Kathy is furious that her husband used their conversation to dig up the case.
Soon Cynthia is hospitalized with a broken arm, cracked ribs and a black eye after what she calls a fall on the stairs near her home. Doctors also find a gonorrhea-related infection, which suggests she was assaulted more than once. Her best friend, Amy Bergen, describes parties thrown by Cynthia’s boyfriend, Tommy Kessler, and his friend Nick Radsen, where girls give boys sexual favors in return for beer. Munch and Fin learn from Tommy that Cynthia went off with an older man in exchange for ecstasy, and Tommy’s sister, Mia, names him as Ross McKenzie, a 24-year-old substitute teacher at her high school, who says he was only chaperoning.
Stabler tells Cynthia’s parents, in hypothetical terms, what his unit handles, and Benson eventually gets Cynthia to name McKenzie as her rapist. McKenzie admits offering her two ecstasy tablets for sex but says she turned him down, and his DNA does not match the rape kit. Cragen has the boys brought in with their parents. Tommy admits that Cynthia performs sex acts on whichever boys he picks, and Cynthia says he sent her into a room with Nick as a birthday present even though she did not want to go.
Spoiler, the ending: Questioned by Benson and Stabler, Nick says Cynthia cried and refused, then lay still, which he takes as permission. He adds that he was angry she had given him gonorrhea and had accused him of rape, and his answers make clear he is the one who attacked her on her way home. The episode ends on his admission, with no arrest, charge or trial shown.
Why it stands out
- Allison Siko makes her first appearance as Kathleen Stabler, a role she goes on to play through Season 12; Holiday Segal played Kathleen in Season 1.
- Jason Fuchs, who plays Nick Radsen, later became a screenwriter, writing Ice Age: Continental Drift and Pan and co-writing the 2017 film Wonder Woman.
- Sprague Grayden, later known for 24 and Jericho, plays Tommy’s older sister, Mia Kessler.