Abomination (Season 5, Episode 8)
Premise: The murder of a former poster model for an ex-gay ministry leads detectives through anti-gay activists and academic rivals to a reparative therapist and his closeted son.
- Air date
- Season/Episode
- Season 5, Episode 8
- 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), DA Arthur Branch (Fred Dalton Thompson)
- Guest stars
- George Segal as Roger Tate, Jonathan Tucker as Ian Tate, James Otis as Reverend Mitchell Shaw, Daphne Zuniga as Emma Dishell, Michael Boatman as Dave Seaver
- Director
- Alex Zakrzewski
- Writers
- Story: Amanda Green & Jose Molina; Written by: Michele Fazekas & Tara Butters
Summary
“Abomination” begins when a young man’s body, wrapped in bedsheets with condoms, turns up on a street where children are learning to cross. His neck is broken, and plaster and paint in his scalp show his head was driven into a wall. Melted nylon on the sheets points to an overheated dryer, and two blood types in the semen show he spent the night with a man. A bar worker recognizes him from posters for ReGenesis, a Christian ministry run by Kelly and Derek Singer, a couple who call themselves ex-gay. The victim, James Reed, was its poster model before he quit and began writing against it.
Reed’s ex-boyfriend, Phil Sona, has an alibi. Hate letters lead to the Reverend Mitchell Shaw, whose Nebraska congregation pickets the funeral, but Shaw was at home leading a protest that night. Reed’s adviser at Hudson University says his graduate study aimed to show that reparative therapists know their treatment fails. Roger Tate, a reparative therapist who quit Reed’s thesis committee, dismisses the work, and the detectives recognize Tate’s son, Ian, 20, from photos of the funeral. Phone records show dozens of calls between Ian and Reed.
Ian denies knowing Reed, but a dryer in his building has melted nylon inside, and a freshly patched hole in his bedroom wall holds Reed’s blood. Ian is charged with murder, and his lawyer, Emma Dishell, claims he was fighting off a rape. Yet hospital records place Ian in an emergency room that night with a cut arm, and the other blood in the wall comes from a close male relative. Ian admits his father found him in bed with Reed, slammed Reed into the wall until he stopped moving, then turned on Ian. Roger Tate is arrested.
His lawyer, Dave Seaver, argues that Tate believed he was stopping a rape, and the judge lets the jury decide whether that belief was reasonable. Ian testifies; a colleague, Dr. Elizabeth Cahill, defends Tate’s research, and Novak pulls it apart. Tate swears he never knew his son was gay. The detectives trace Ian’s high-school girlfriend, Sandy Klein, whose mother, Laura, says she told Tate years earlier.
Spoiler, the ending: Faced with Laura Klein as a rebuttal witness and with Ian confronting him over years of hearing that people like him are sick, Tate accepts second-degree murder with 20 years to life and no hate-crime enhancement. Afterward Ian says nothing will be the same now that he is out, and when an apology comes for forcing it, he answers that he is not sorry.
Why it stands out
- Fred Dalton Thompson makes a special appearance as District Attorney Arthur Branch.
- George Segal plays Roger Tate and Jonathan Tucker plays his son, Ian, with Daphne Zuniga and Michael Boatman as the defense lawyers.
- The dialogue cites the Matthew Shepard murder trial, where the judge refused to let the jury hear a “gay panic” theory, and a recent Supreme Court gay-rights ruling in a Texas case.