Privilege (Season 4, Episode 17)
Premise: A young woman dressed as a maid falls to her death from a Manhattan penthouse, and the investigation exposes a wealthy family’s long habit of covering for its heir.
- Air date
- Season/Episode
- Season 4, Episode 17
- 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), Dr. George Huang (BD Wong), ME Dr. Melinda Warner (Tamara Tunie)
- Guest stars
- Erik von Detten as Drew Lamerly, Michael Learned as Candace Lamerly, John Bolger as Douglas Lamerly, Mariette Hartley as Lorna Scarry, Sarah Wayne Callies as Jenny Rochester
- Director
- Jean de Segonzac
- Writers
- Patrick Harbinson
Summary
“Privilege” opens with a young woman in a maid’s uniform found dead in a neighbor’s garden below Trellacker Tower, her face destroyed by the fall and her body marked with old and fresh bruises. A lobby camera shows her using a key to enter the penthouse of the wealthy Lamerly family while, according to security chief Tom Paysen, a retired police officer, the family was in Connecticut. Douglas Lamerly identifies her as Anna Rivera, a recently fired maid.
Her prints show she hung from the balcony railing before falling. Traces of a film-cleaning solvent on her hands lead to the New School, where she is identified as Carmen Trancoso, a Brazilian film student who had dated Douglas’s son, Drew; the real Anna is in Miami. Drew comes forward to say Carmen phoned him in Connecticut that evening with threats, and admits the bruises are his but says she wanted rough sex. Her lawyer says she planned to sue Drew for rape, and family lawyer Lorna Scarry counters with affidavits from Carmen’s former boyfriends about her sexual tastes.
Drew was expelled from his prep school after a prom date accused him of assault, and the police report has vanished. A leftover aided card leads to a brothel run by Camilla Hartnell and then to the date, Jenny White, now married to millionaire Angus Rochester; she privately says Drew raped her but refuses to testify. A computer model of the fall shows Carmen was pushed, Munch finds ten seconds cut from the lobby tape, and the detectives learn that Paysen took Jenny’s complaint years earlier. Drew’s grandmother, Candace, blames Paysen, and Drew passes a polygraph that Huang believes he beat. Blue suede traces on Carmen’s heel match a jacket in Drew’s room, and he is arrested.
Cabot rejects a manslaughter plea, and Scarry builds a defense on criminologist Lonnie Athens’s theory that brutal upbringings create violent adults. Candace testifies that Douglas beat Drew and took him to prostitutes from age 13, and the judge excludes Drew’s interview with Huang as privileged. Jenny then tells detectives that Candace, not Douglas, brought the teenage Drew to the brothel and picked the women. On the stand, Drew says he pushed Carmen in a rage. Cabot produces statements that his arm was broken playing hockey, not by his father, and presses him on who took him to the brothel until the courtroom erupts and his grandmother collapses.
Spoiler, the ending: At the hospital, detectives tell Candace that Douglas has told them everything and that she faces charges of conspiracy, perjury and hindering prosecution. She tells her son he is nothing and insists she made Drew a man. No verdict in Drew’s trial is shown.
Why it stands out
- Michael Learned plays the family matriarch, Candace Lamerly, and Mariette Hartley plays the family’s lawyer, Lorna Scarry.
- Erik von Detten plays Drew Lamerly, and Sarah Wayne Callies appears as Jenny Rochester.