September is the busy time of month for the SVU: kids returning home from summer camp confess abuse, drunken college students causeabuse. While painted frat boys hoot and holler at Olivia (much too classy to qualify as a "cougar," boys), the new ADA is trying to horn in on as many cases as she can, much to the irritation of Cragen (who figures she'll lose her enthusiasm before too long) and Stabler.
Fin and Munch are working a domestic abuse case with a couple who've been here before, but she refuses to testify against him and goes with the "I fell down the stairs" explanation and he, unaware of her misplaced loyalty, offers up the charming "she's a lying whore" refutation of rape. Elliot heads to the hospital to check out a three-year-old with a suspicious fracture, and Olivia catches what looks to be the major plot: a tearful teenager, Eric Byers, walks in, and says he doesn't know what to do. Olivia does her best to coax the story from him: he knows it's wrong, but he loves him. "It's getting hard not to touch," he says, and hands over a photograph of Corey: his stepbrother.
Eric says he hasn't actually done anything wrong; at least he doesn't think he has. (He's been drinking.) So Olivia heads off to talk to his mother, Dana, played by Teri Polo, who's understandably unnerved that a sexual-crimes detective is asking leading questions about her five-year-old stepson, and even more upset when Olivia says they think Eric's been abusing Corey.
Over to the hospital, where Corey's dad, played by Josh Charles, shows up in a rage. Sports Night reunion! Dan and Rebecca made it work! Well, except for the abused kid, I guess. He threatens to kill Eric, and is only somewhat mollified when the doctor says there are no signs of penetration or abuse -- but some abuse can go undetected.
So the detectives have to go bad cop/bad cop on Eric, who swears he's never done anything, and instead found a website for people like him run by a guy named Jake. Jake assured him that he was born that way, but the rule is "Look but don't touch."
Since the psychiatrist hasn't gotten anywhere with Corey, the detectives have to let Eric go. Even though he's asking for help, the only programs are for registered sex offenders. So the only way he can get help is if he actually rapes a kid first, which provides this episode's requisite "the whole freakin' system is out of order!" moment. So the detectives set their sights on Jake Berlin, who runs Pediaphax, a website that provides fully-clothed pictures of children to pedophiles under the "look but don't touch" rule.
Jake's not exactly surprised to see Elliot and Olivia show up: "I was wondering when you'd get here," he says. Can you guess which detective says, "You're a steaming bag of crap that I would love to shove down a hole"? Although Olivia's not much less disgusted, calling Jake's site a "kiddie treasure map." Jake says he cautioned Eric against doing anything, and since pedophiles love to brag, he'd know. Jake and Elliot argue about pedophiles (Jake prefers "pedosexual") and deviants, with Jake drawing parallels to homosexuality once being thought of in the same light. Gay people don't have sex with children, says Elliot. "Neither do I," says Jake. Given that Jake admits to preferring "little angels" between the ages of three and nine, I'm not sure how Elliot kept from throwing Jake out the window when Jake asked to see pictures of his family. Maybe it was because he promised "not to drool."
Over at Eric's place, Sean and Dana are at each other's throats, since he doesn't believe that she doesn't know where he is. "What'd you do to turn your son into such a freak?" he yells. Forensics finds Corey's shirt with semen on it.
But the psychiatrist, after interviewing Corey again, is convinced the kid was coached. The new ADA is spitting fire, despite Olivia (and even Elliot) trying to point out this isn't a case that's going to hold up. "Just do your job and I'll do mine," she says, and she orders them to "squeeze the pedophile's mother until she pops."
Back at the station, the detectives learn that DNA shows the semen didn't come from Eric, but from Corey's father. Munch is going through the photos on Pediaphax, hoping to ID kids so parents can be alerted. He laments that a fresh batch has just gone up on the site, and when a picture of a young blonde girl flashes on the screen, Elliot freezes up and asks Munch to go with Olivia to talk to Corey's father. No can do, says Munch, who's chained to the desk by Cragen. That leaves Fin, who glares at the rat bastard Elliot.
But at least Fin gets to throw Sean around a little at the job site. Sean freaks when he finds out about the semen, and goes pale when he finds out it's his own. He says that after Eric started drinking (to cope), Dana blamed him, and his marriage went to hell. "Don't tell me you never self-served," he says to Fin. "Not in my son's shirt," says Fin. Fucking SERIOUSLY. Sean says the hamper was just in the bathroom, and the shirt was on top of the hamper. Yeah. Still. You know what else is in a bathroom? TOILET PAPER.
So what's Elliot doing? Kicking down Jake Berlin's door. In case anyone's surprised.
Back at the station, Munch has recognized the blonde girl; it's Elizabeth Stabler, who's now fifteen. He tells Cragen about it, as well as Elliot suddenly having to run an errand. I love, love Cragen going into "oh, SHIT" mode: grabbing his gun from the top drawer of his desk and ordering Munch to move his ass.
The detectives show up at Berlin's apartment, where he's bloody and lying on the floor, which Elliot futilely trying to gain access to the website so he can delete his daughter's picture. "This doesn't look good, El," says Olivia. Cragen orders Jake to remove the picture (which he does, with extra-special on-screen deletion notifications and dramatic picture dissolving). And Jake wants to press charges.
That's not happening, but a royally pissed Cragen takes Elliot's gun and badge, and suspends him without pay "until Berlin's bruises heal. And yours, too." Cragen wants Elliot, "you selfish son of a bitch" to think about the three good detectives who have put their careers on the line because he went off half-cocked. Elliot leaves Cragen's office, looks at the other detectives looking at him, and leaves without saying anything. Are you guys still on to watch the Giants on Sunday?
The ADA, whose name I still can't remember, comes in for another round of I-know-best with the detectives, who talk her off the sex charges (since all she's got is a coached five-year-old with no physical evidence) and charge Eric on the child pornography found on his laptop, since that would get him off the streets and into a program.
So it's another round with Sean and Dana, who's completely falling apart, blaming herself for making her son who he is or, at the very least, bringing him into this world. She swears she doesn't know where he is, but Olivia and Fin (who's actually impressed by Elliot's restraint -- "I'd have done him," says Fin, if it had been his own kid) stake out her place and eventually catch her carrying a box somewhere.
The detectives follow her into a ground-floor apartment, and break into a run when they hear Dana scream. They find her cradling Eric's bloody, pale, lifeless body. "I killed him," she says over and over again, making Fin and Olivia look concerned, even though it's clearly self-blame and not an admission of guilt.
While the crime-scene guys go to work, Olivia quizzes Dana, who says she didn't know where Eric was until last night, when he called and left a message asking for help. She says she gave him $300 and told him he was on his own. She found the pornography on Eric's computer and never wanted to see him again. "I loved my son, and I'm glad he's dead!" she wails. Teri Polo nails it, gives me chills.
It takes an awful long time for Sean's name to be mentioned as a suspect, except the problem is that with all the blood, from eighteen stab wounds from several dull knives, there would have been too much transfer -- to clothes, car, home -- for Sean to clean up.
But Eric was also sodomized, with Corey's own baseball bat. That much, Sean cops to, but not the murder. He says he left Eric alive. And the ADA is suddenly a stickler for making sure the suspect is a lock for the crime, which she blames on Casey Novak lying to a judge. Warner finds some blood that doesn't belong to Eric, but to a diabetic. Hmmm. Maybe I should have mentioned that Jake Berlin did that finger-prick thing when the detectives interviewed him the first time. Not that it matters, since Jake's really the only other character from the episode, so this late in the game it's gotta be him.
Yep, it's him. He was enraged because Eric finally gave in to his urges and molested a kid. "My site, my consequences," says Jake when he gets arrested. His anger seems to come as much from jealousy that Eric gave in. Unfortunately, Eric refused to tell Jake who the victim was. "You just killed the only person who knew who the victim was," an angry Olivia tells him.
Olivia holds a press conference with a picture of Eric to ask anyone who'd seen him around to come forward. She interviews five kids, all of whom saw Eric or talked to him, or took candy from him, but none of them were actually molested. Munch tells a despondent Olivia that the kid will turn up, but it's not much comfort to think that, since it's only because the abuse, as described on Pediaphax, was so awful that the victim will have too many problems for a parent not to know something's up. Yeah, thanks for the comfort, Munch.
So: Elliot gone, for who knows how long (back episode?), and there's a horribly traumatized victim out there who may never get help. The only thing that saves things from being a complete downer is the abused woman from the opening segment shows up, bruised and bloody, and ready to give a statement. She doesn't want to die, she tells Munch. That's great. Because after this episode I feel like killing myself.
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