Season 9 episode 11
Streetwise
This is the episode where, in my opinion, Benson and Stabler are revealed to be irredeemably stupid. I know there are probably episodes earlier in the series where this was proven, but this was the first episode I ever watched of this show. It was also the episode where they make the stupidest, most obvious mistake I've ever seen on television.
So, a girl turns up "raped" and murdered in the park. Nothing these guys haven't seen before. At least a quarter of these episodes start out/have a victim in a park. This is important guys, if anyone ends up in New York City, never under any circumstances go near a park. Especially if you're female. You'll just end up being raped and murdered. SVU seems to think so, and this show is clearly the gospel on such things.
Bits of black paint are found in the wounds on the girl's head. The nice coroner lady says that she thinks the COD was blunt force trauma to the head via a chain of some kind. Seriously, the nice coroner lady, the FBI psychologist guy and maybe the captain are the only competent ones on the show. I would count Munch and Finn, but they're only really relevant when they're fucking up, so they don't get to be part of the Not a Moron Club.
They like the girl's boyfriend for the rape. At least until the boyfriend admits to having consensual sex with her before she went off to some rich people party. Oh yeah, victim is rich. This will become important later on. The story is corroborated by the rape kit, but I'm still not entirely sure how the rape kit works. Is it a literal kit? They throw around the words "rape kit" in every episode, but never really explains how it works. They take pictures and poke them with stuff? I don't know.
Eventually they find some security cam footage of a little girl hawking one of the victim's earrings. After bitching out the pawn shop owner for doing business with minors (Guys! You two break the law all the time. Get off your fucking high horse.) they go off in search of the little girl.
I forget how exactly, but they do eventually find her. She's one of many homeless children living in a "family". A group of children with a "mother" and a "father". It becomes obvious that the "father" is the murderer, they just don't have any evidence to back it up. So, they bring the girl back to the precinct, and bribe her with food until she talks. Also, there was something about a social worker in there at some point, but she's not all that important.
Well, when the girl finally talks she gives the detectives some disturbing news. Her "father" has a new rule. Anyone who "disrespects" him gets their heads bashed in with his friend Mr. Chain. She gives them details about his four or five victims, and information on where they can find the bodies. Little ice cream can go a long way.
Once they finish questioning the kid they release her into the custody of the social worker. Without any police protection or anything. And then they act surprised when the social worker turns up dead and the girl is kidnapped and tortured to death.
Just to reiterate, because this is the really fucking stupid bit. They coerce a young girl into giving detailed descriptions of the crimes the man she considers her adoptive father had committed. A man who is obviously a violent sociopath. A man who lives by and enforces his own sick personal code where anyone who he considers "disrespectful" gets the death penalty. A man who undoubtedly would consider informing on him to the police to be really disrespectful. A man who more than likely knows about the social worker that the girl has been talking to on numerous occasions.
And then they just let her go, with no protection from that man and are surprised when they find the girl's mangled corpse.
Great detective work. Honestly, those two should get medals or something.
Anyway, they then go on to get the man convicted of the now five or six murders he committed. And then they turn around and book his "wife" who turns out to be a girl who used to go to the same school as the victim. Turns out she was afraid her rich friend would tell her parents that she saw the wife-lady in the park, and didn't want to go back living the life of a spoiled rich girl. So she told the murder-happy-child-torture-guy that the victim called him a nasty name. Since nasty names fall under the general umbrella of disrespect, he bashed her head in.
So they charged her as an accessory to murder or something similar, and everyone who was still alive and not in jail lived on to fuck up another day. Go team.
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