“Law & Order: SVU’s” latest ripped-from-the-headlines-plot was inspired by a case that sparked outrage across New York City in 2011 — after two NYPD cops were acquitted of rape charges.
In Wednesday’s episode on NBC (9 p.m./ Ch. 4), Brian Cassidy (Dean Winters) goes undercover for the Internal Affairs Bureau after a cop (guest star Marc Menchaca) accuses his precinct of cooking the books and making rape allegations disappear before he’s shipped off to a psych ward.
In the real-life version, two police officers, Kenneth Moreno and Franklin Mata, were accused of raping a drunken woman after helping her into her East Village apartment. Despite security video of the cops re-entering the woman’s apartment three times that night — and a seemingly damning confession by Moreno — the pair were acquitted of felony rape and convicted of official misconduct.
“That one in particular stayed with us because it seemed as if … in real life they were hit with departmental charges — they got away with it,” says SVU showrunner/ executive producer Warren Leight.
“That was disturbing.”
Leight says Wednesday’s episode is really a hybrid of a number of incidents of police abuse of power, including a 2012 case of an offduty NYPD cop accused in the gunpoint rape of an Inwood schoolteacher. While “SVU” doesn’t do many stories about dirty cops — since the cops are generally the good guys on the show — Leight was intrigued by the gray area of a drunk rape victim trying to prove a crime was committed.
“One of the things we keep trying to depict is how the system handles rape victims. In this case the system appeared to have failed completely,” Leight says. “Because rape happens behind closed doors, it’s easy for defense to claim reasonable doubt.
“That’s a perfect story for us to go after.”
The stakes for the show are heightened because Cassidy goes undercover just after he’s moved in with Det. Olivia Benson (Mariska Hargitay), putting a strain on their relationship as she’s still reeling from the aftereffects of the show’s season premiere (when she was kidnapped and beaten by a rapist before escaping).
“We specialize in bittersweet. Everything comes at a cost,” Leight says, while declining to comment on whether Wednesday’s episode would bring a more satisfying resolution of justice than the real-life trial.
“This is how the NYPD and DA’s office failed to handle it a few years ago — and this is how it could have been handled.”