Unorthodox (Season 9, Episode 13)
Premise: The rape of a young boy turns suspicion on his Hasidic community until the trail leads to a bullied 14-year-old whose lawyer blames a sex-saturated culture.
- Air date
- Season/Episode
- Season 9, Episode 13
- Starring
- Det. Olivia Benson (Mariska Hargitay), Det. Elliot Stabler (Christopher Meloni), Sgt. 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), CSU Ryan O’Halloran (Mike Doyle)
- Guest stars
- Rhea Perlman as Roxana Fox, Alexander Gould as Jack Trembley, Braeden Lemasters as David Zelinsky, Bob Dishy as Rabbi Iscowitz, Michael McGlone as George Trembley
- Director
- David Platt
- Writers
- Josh Singer
Summary
“Unorthodox” begins when a school security guard notices that 10-year-old David Zelinsky is bleeding. At the hospital, doctors find he was raped that morning and has scarring from months of earlier assaults. His mother, Rachel, says his father, Avi, became Hasidic and moved to Williamsburg after their marriage ended. Avi says David was with him at morning prayers until a tutor, Jacob Ribowsky, drove him to school. Stabler and Munch go to the yeshiva, where Rabbi Iscowitz says a rabbinical court has already cleared Jacob and that he need not answer police questions without a warrant. Cornered, Jacob’s secret girlfriend, Faith, admits that the two spent the day at a film festival, and the theater manager backs them up.
David then vanishes from his mother’s apartment. Security video shows Avi leaving with him, and a passport issued on Rachel’s forged consent raises fears of a flight to Israel, but Avi’s car turns up in Kehilat Moshe, a closed Hasidic town upstate. There the detectives find David with Rabbi Iscowitz, and David says he asked to go because he was promised he would be safe at a school there. A pubic hair from the rape kit shows the attacker is an adolescent, and David names Jack Trembley, a 14-year-old at his school who is bullied by boys his own age. Jack says he was copying a prison rape scene from a movie and wanted respect. His father, George, hits him and then disowns him.
George’s call to Legal Aid brings in defense lawyer Roxana Fox. Novak plans to try Jack as an adult, and the rabbi is released. After a sleepless night with his newborn, Stabler persuades Novak to move the case to family court, but when two young girls also accuse Jack, she pulls it back to criminal court before jeopardy attaches. Fox pleads insanity, arguing that sexual content on television and online left Jack unable to see that what he did was wrong. At trial three girls describe being forced, and Fox does not cross-examine them. Dr. Emily Sopher testifies about media and adolescent sex, Stabler urges George to stand by his son, and on the stand Jack says his victims were willing before breaking down and apologizing to his father. Novak turns down a plea to sexual misconduct.
Spoiler, the ending: On every count, the jury finds Jack not responsible because of mental disease or defect, and he is committed to Bellevue for psychiatric evaluation. David asks why the jury did not believe him and is told that it did, but it believed Jack too. Afterward, Munch suggests that the Hasidim, cutting their children off from modern culture, may not be entirely wrong.
Why it stands out
- Rhea Perlman guest stars as defense attorney Roxana Fox, and Alexander Gould plays Jack Trembley.
- Linda Emond returns as Dr. Emily Sopher, the expert witness from season 5’s “Hate” and “Mean.”
- Stabler refers to being up all night with his newborn son, whose birth comes earlier in the season in “Paternity.”