Head (Season 5, Episode 25)
Premise: A restroom voyeur’s hidden camera captures a sixth grader being sexually assaulted, and the trail leads to his school principal and a tumor in her brain.
- Air date
- Season/Episode
- Season 5, Episode 25
- 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
- Stacy Edwards as Meredith Rice, Jake Weary as Shane Madden, James Urbaniak as Wade Donato, Diana Scarwid as Jackie Madden, Amy Sedaris as Charlie Donato
- Ripped from the headlines
- Inspired by a real case in Virginia, in which a male teacher who became a sex offender was found to have a large tumor in the right orbitofrontal part of his brain.
- Director
- Juan J. Campanella
- Writers
- Lisa Marie Petersen & Dawn DeNoon
Summary
“Head” opens with a woman finding a hidden camera in a café restroom. The waterproof spy camera was built by Charlie Donato, a technician at Vic Spinella’s surveillance shop, and a man who was knocked over by a fleeing customer with a laptop leads detectives to her apartment. There her brother, Wade, keeps a collection of homemade restroom videos and a detailed log. Facing years in prison under New York’s new video voyeurism law, Wade offers a recording from a Central Park restroom that shows a boy with a fresh cut over his eye being sexually assaulted.
Enhanced frames show an athletic cup, a soccer jersey and a manicured hand: the attacker is a woman. The boy is 12-year-old Shane Madden, who was sent off during a game that day. Suspicion falls on his mother, Jackie, a heavy drinker, and on his former babysitter, until a parent’s game video rules Jackie out. Shane will not name anyone. The detectives turn to his principal, Meredith Rice, who keeps appearing at youth games, whose marriage has turned stormy and whose handwriting has grown erratic. When Rice and Shane both vanish, an Amber Alert leads to her car in Edgewater, New Jersey.
Rice says the park was the first time and running away was Shane’s idea. In interrogation she makes a sexual advance at Stabler, he shoves her away, and she has a seizure, which brings IAB Sgt. Ed Tucker. A scan finds a large tumor in her right orbitofrontal cortex, and surgeons remove it. Afterward her handwriting returns to normal, she says her grandfather abused her as a child, and an experimental brain scan shows no response to the test images. Three more boys come forward. Rice turns down her lawyer’s advice and takes Novak’s offer: a plea to third-degree rape, probation and sex offender registration.
Spoiler, the ending: Shane, who says he wants to die, is still waiting for Rice to call him back. She finally does, breaking a restraining order; his mother overhears and Rice ends up badly beaten. Arrested for violating her probation, Rice reveals that she is pregnant with Shane’s child. The season ends there.
Why it stands out
- This is the fifth-season finale.
- The story was inspired by a real case in Virginia, also cited in the episode, in which a male teacher who began committing sex offenses was found to have a large tumor in the right orbitofrontal part of his brain.
- IAB’s Ed Tucker brings up a suspension Stabler received four years earlier after telling the department psychiatrist he dreamed of killing pedophiles.