Home (Season 5, Episode 16)
Premise: A boy found scavenging for food leads detectives to a homeschooling mother whose fear of the outside world ends with one of her sons shot dead.
- Air date
- Season/Episode
- Season 5, 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 Casey Novak (Diane Neal), Dr. George Huang (BD Wong)
- Guest stars
- Diane Venora as Marilyn Nesbit, Joseph Cross as Adam Nesbit, Jesse Schwartz as Jacob Nesbit, Dixie Carter as Denise Brockmorton, Marlo Thomas as Judge Mary Clark
- Director
- Rick Wallace
- Writers
- Amanda Green
Summary
“Home” starts when a homeowner catches a thin boy eating chicken out of his trash. The boy, Jacob Nesbit, says he lives a block away with his mother and older brother, Adam, and has never had pancakes because of his mother’s food rules; he will not say how he is punished. His mother, Marilyn, refuses to let Benson and Stabler inside. A neighbor says the boys’ father was killed in a store holdup before Jacob was born, and an education official confirms Marilyn has homeschooled both sons for years. Adam’s second-grade teacher remembers a hungry, anxious child whom Marilyn withdrew from school as soon as a neglect report was threatened.
Denise Brockmorton, counsel for the New York Home School League, accuses the police of persecuting her client. ACS caseworker Steve Krauss sees no grounds to keep Jacob and sends him home. That night Jacob phones Stabler, who finds the boy shot dead. A second round jammed in the gun, ruling out suicide, and Marilyn and Adam are gone. Her car’s GPS leads to a mall near Westchester and then to another homeschooling family, the Kesters, where Marilyn is arrested.
Receipts and store video clear Marilyn of the shooting itself, and Adam confesses that he killed his brother to spare him from foster care, which he believes means rape and abuse. At arraignment he tries to plead guilty over the objections of his lawyer, Attorney Shamal (called Jameau in the episode). Dr. George Huang finds him competent but paranoid. Unsure Adam should be prosecuted, Novak seeks advice from Mary Clark, the former judge she once clerked for. E-mails Adam sent to Polly Kester reveal that his mother wanted him to do something, and Adam admits the gun jammed when he turned it on himself. Novak charges Marilyn with criminal facilitation.
Testifying before the grand jury, Marilyn calls child-welfare workers “DYFS,” the New Jersey agency’s initials. Its files show that, as Marilyn Chesterfield, she lost custody in 1995 of an older son, Daniel, who said she beat him after blaming him for his father’s death. Daniel, now out of the Navy, visits Adam, who had been told he died in foster care. Adam then reveals that Marilyn brought him the gun, said only he could stop the family from being split up, and promised they would all be together in heaven.
Spoiler, the ending: Brockmorton arrives expecting a routine indictment and finds Adam and Daniel waiting. Adam asks his mother why she lied and why she told him to shoot Jacob. Marilyn insists Daniel is dead, warns Adam that he will never be safe without her, and the episode ends there, with no trial shown.
Why it stands out
- Neal Baer, a writer on the series, later called “Home” the most controversial episode of his career; in a 2012 interview he said he had never expected it to draw so much hate mail, arguing that school gives children a safety net of adults who see them.
- Marlo Thomas makes her first appearance as Mary Clark, a former judge now in private practice, a role she returns to later in the season.