Contagious (Season 6, Episode 11)
Premise: A medical exam after a car crash reveals that a nine-year-old has been abused, but the man she names may not be the one who hurt her.
- Air date
- Season/Episode
- Season 6, Episode 11
- 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. Rebecca Hendrix (Mary Stuart Masterson), Defense Attorney Trevor Langan (Peter Hermann)
- Guest stars
- Jennette McCurdy as Holly Purcell, Daniel Hugh Kelly as Mark Dobbins, Zach Gilford as Kevin Wilcox, David Lansbury as Larry Purcell, Rebecca Lowman as Julie Dobbins
- Ripped from the headlines
- Inspired by the child-abuse panics of early-1980s California, especially the McMartin preschool case and the Kern County abuse prosecutions, in which accusations of ritual abuse later collapsed.
- Director
- Aaron Lipstadt
- Writers
- Jonathan Greene
Summary
“Contagious” begins after a drunk driver slams into the Purcell family’s car. At the hospital, nine-year-old Holly Purcell panics when a male doctor tries to examine her, and a pediatric specialist finds signs of sexual abuse. With both parents in surgery, Novak obtains a court order for an exam under sedation, which reveals a recent, unhealed tear that her father, Larry, cannot explain away with an earlier bike fall. In an interview, Holly says a man abused her and threatened to shoot her the way he shot a girl in the park. The detectives connect this to Laura Swift, an eight-year-old who vanished from Flushing Meadows the previous May and was never found.
Dr. Rebecca Hendrix, the psychiatrist on call, works with Holly through drawings, and Holly names “Uncle Mark”: Mark Dobbins, a family friend across the street who is also the gym teacher at her school, Chestnut Academy. The detectives arrest him at a football game he is coaching. Two classmates, Nicole Van Houten and Danielle Pellegrino, then tell their mothers that Dobbins abused them as well, and calls pour in from other Chestnut parents. A search finds no gun, but it does turn up a sealed Buffalo arrest for soliciting a 15-year-old, and Dobbins admits forging a prosecutor’s letter to get his job. Stabler, separated from his family and living alone, nearly lashes out at Dobbins’s wife, Julie, and tells Benson he cannot keep doing the job.
Shortly before a hearing on whether she can testify, Holly says Uncle Mark never touched her. Nicole and Danielle admit their mothers kept pressing them until they said yes, and it emerges that Holly’s mother had phoned the other parents with a warning. Novak asks the court to dismiss the indictment, and the judge apologizes to Dobbins. Hendrix concludes that Holly named the safest target because she feared the real abuser. Studying the drawings again, she notices the man beside Holly wears a maroon-and-white jersey with a yellow stripe, which marks the captain of a high school lacrosse team: Kevin Wilcox, who was seen near the girls’ soccer games. Holly confirms it.
Spoiler, the ending: A gun turns up under the spare tire of Wilcox’s car, and the lab ties it to a shell casing from Laura Swift’s disappearance. Facing prison as a child molester, Wilcox admits raping Holly and says he buried Laura in a vacant lot in College Point. Stabler’s children, alerted by Benson, surprise him with a birthday cake. Dobbins tells Stabler that Chestnut has fired him over the forged letter and that his family is selling their house to move in with his parents upstate.
Why it stands out
- Jennette McCurdy plays Holly; she later described the role as her favorite acting job.
- Mary Stuart Masterson returns as psychiatrist Dr. Rebecca Hendrix, the former police officer introduced two episodes earlier in “Weak.”
- Stabler’s separation from his wife hangs over the episode, which ends with his four children celebrating his birthday at the precinct.