Recap / Law & Order: Special Victims Unit S12 E6 "Branded"

Written By Chris Brancato

Directed By Peter Leto

A businessman is knocked out, tied up, stripped, and branded with the word ruiner on his chest. The case catches a break when the medical examination reveals a game timer and three dice inserted into the victim's rectum. A second attack on a different man leads detectives to discover both victims had worked at a summer camp decades prior and might be guilty of their own crimes.

Tropes

• Arson, Murder, and Jaywalking: When Camille won't stop her outbursts from the gallery about how her victims raped her and the rules of evidence are preventing the jury from hearing the whole story, the judge sanctimoniously warns her
  Not another word, Miss Walters, or you're going to add contempt to your charges.
• Ass Shove: the vigilante shoves pieces from a board game up the first rapist's ass, and a candle up the second rapist's ass. Played for laughs.
  Benson: So he was drugged from behind.
  Doctor: And violated. I found several unusual objects inserted into his rectum.
  Benson: As opposed to the usual ones?
  Doctor: Well, you'd be surprised what people say they slipped and fell on, soda bottles, flashlights, assorted fruits and vegetables - but never this. Three dice and a little timer.
  Benson: From a board game? So our perp's a sore loser.
• Bookends: the episode begins with a man (who is eventually revealed to be a rapist) found with game pieces inserted into his rectum. At the end of the episode Stabler gloats to the leader of the gang rape that the squad has found a bunch of his victims who will be able to press charges against him (since the statute of limitations on their cases has not expired, unlike Camille's rape).
  Rapist: What happens now?
  Stabler: Go directly to jail. Do not pass go. Do not collect $200.
• Double Standard Rape: Female on Male: Two men are sodomized and mutilated in separate incidents. The detectives immediately treat them as perps rather than victims; when the detectives' assumptions are proven right, and it turns out the victims had raped their rapist years prior, the DA sets them up to be convicted of perjury (when they testify against their rapist in court but initially fail to admit their past crimes) while getting their rapist off on a trespassing charge. Huang gets off a single line early on about how easily the detectives are jumping to blame the victim, but otherwise the trope is played entirely straight; the serial rapist even gets a happy ending when the DA arranges for her to reunite with her daughter who she'd given up for adoption. Give the case a male serial rapist and it's hard to imagine SVU not only arranging for him to go free, but handing over a tween girl to him, just because the people he'd been caught raping had previously raped him. In a fully gender-flipped case one might expect the story-opening victims to be treated sympathetically at first, as apparent victims of a sexual predator; for the twist to come as a shock to everyone; and for the avenging rapist to get his revenge in court but only after accepting a deal for hard time, as punishment for his own crimes.
• Hollywood Law: Properly speaking the results of a paternity test should be introduced into evidence by an expert witness, not by the child whose paternity is in question.
• Justice by Other Legal Means: ADA Hardwick can't prosecute Camille's rapists for her rape because the statute of limitations has expired, so she arranges a perjury trap for them, preparing to prosecute them for perjury after they testify in the case against Camille but testify falsely about their behavior in the previous incident.
• Law of Inverse Fertility: Camille is made pregnant by just a couple of acts of sexual assault.
• Mama's Baby, Papa's Maybe: Camille knows one of her rapists impregnated her, but she doesn't know which, inspiring a plot twist: Camille's daughter is marched into court to point out who her father is from the witness stand and it appears she's pointing to the Big Bad rapist - but when he starts causing a scene it's quickly clarified that the daughter is pointing at the Nice Guy rapist who only participated in the rape under pressure. The drama of The Reveal prompts him to confess and turn on his conspirators.
• Papa Wolf: The realization that he's the father of his victim's daughter is enough for one of the three gang rapists to turn on the ringleader.
• Rape as Backstory: Camille's gang rape, 14 years prior, moulds her personality and sets the stage for the events of the main plot.
• That Came Out Wrong: when the squad meets their new ADA, Hardwick, she explains to Stabler:
  Hardwick: I was in the Brooklyn blue zone when your DA poached me, and I have to say I'm glad he did, I'm a big fan of your unit.
  Stabler: (raises eyebrows)
  Hardwick: That came out wrong.
• To Be Lawful or Good: Benson gives Hardwick a lot of guff for aggressively prosecuting Camille for the sexual assault of her rapists, going out of her way to slut-shame Camille and suppress evidence regarding the original rape, while not prosecuting the men in question because the statute of limitations on the original rape has expired. Hardwick insists she is compelled to act in this way because her job is to follow the law.
  Hardwick: My job is to win the case.
  Benson: No, your job is to make sure that justice is done.
  • By the end of the episode Hardwick has given defense counsel the information they needed to get their client off on mere trespassing and prepared to prosecute her own witnesses, Camille's rapists, for perjury.
• Whole-Plot Reference: The episode is a version of The Millennium Trilogy, with a vigilante hacker Lisbeth Salander Expy, who was gang-raped at a summer camp a la Dexter Season 5 and, like Lisbeth, carved "rapist" into her perpetrators' chests.