Confrontation (Season 8, Episode 5)
Premise: A rapist who keeps returning to his victims is timing the attacks to their ovulation, and the only proof grows inside a victim who will not admit it.
- Air date
- Season/Episode
- Season 8, Episode 5
- Starring
- Det. Elliot Stabler (Christopher Meloni), Det. John Munch (Richard Belzer), Det. Odafin “Fin” Tutuola (Ice-T), Det. Dani Beck (Connie Nielsen), Capt. Donald Cragen (Dann Florek), ADA Casey Novak (Diane Neal), Dr. George Huang (BD Wong), ME Dr. Melinda Warner (Tamara Tunie)
- Guest stars
- Michael Kelly as Luke Dixon, Kerry O’Malley as Megan Carlisle, Matthew Arkin as Barry Carlisle, Marin Ireland as Gina Maylor, Eleanor Hutchins as Elizabeth Hassenback
- Director
- David Platt
- Writers
- Judith McCreary
Summary
“Confrontation” opens as Elizabeth Hassenback calls Stabler to say that the man who raped her 17 days earlier has just attacked her again and that she is chasing him with a baton. When Beck calls in, Stabler tells her to meet him at the morgue: Elizabeth has apparently been killed by blows to the head. During the first attack she was held for 36 hours, made to fill a cup with urine and scrubbed in the tub, and other boroughs’ files turn up women with the same account. Gina Maylor of Brooklyn says she was raped three times; Detective Geiger, who took her second report, did not believe a rapist would strike twice and refuses to admit any fault. Beck tells Stabler that her husband, Mike, was shot by two 15-year-olds after a traffic stop, and that the surviving killer has started calling her from Attica.
Laid on a calendar, the attacks fall 17 to 23 days apart, and the detectives realize the rapist is testing the urine to time ovulation: he wants to father children. The pattern stopped for Megan Carlisle, raped five months ago and now pregnant after months of fertility treatment, and she and her husband, Barry, deny any second attack. All the victims’ buildings are run by one company, whose master keys lead first to a crude property manager, Ted Wilmington, and then to office manager Luke Dixon, a microbiologist fired from a biomedical firm for sexual misconduct. His apartment holds dozens of ovulation kits and a calendar of initials and dates. While a decoy officer stands in for Gina, Beck catches Dixon with a knife and beats him, and Cragen warns her about her history of excessive-force complaints. Gina identifies Dixon in a lineup, but before the pretrial hearing she is found dead, apparently by suicide.
Megan cannot positively identify Dixon, so Novak charges her with obstruction and perjury to get a paternity test. Judge Taten rules that it must wait until the baby is born.
Spoiler, the ending: Stabler and Beck press Megan, and she agrees to an amniocentesis. The DNA confirms Dixon as the father, and he explains that he wants to stop people with inferior genes from breeding. He accepts 15 to 25 years on each count and names all his victims. Stabler tells Barry there will be no trial, and Barry asks whether Stabler could raise a rapist’s child. Beck then takes Stabler to Attica, where she tells Tracy Monroe, one of her husband’s killers, that she must find a way to forgive him.
Why it stands out
- Writer Judith McCreary said the idea came from an online search that turned up stories of women raped more than once by the same man.
- The victim’s name, Elizabeth Hassenback, drew an objection from Elisabeth Hasselbeck of “The View,” who called for a boycott of the show.
- Beck’s backstory comes out: her husband, Mike Dooley, was shot dead in November 2002.