'Law & Order: SVU' Season 16: Episode 21 Recap, 'Perverted Justice'
This week on "Law & Order: SVU," Bayard Ellis returns to take on the case of a man jailed for incest and rape, whose daughter Michelle, the victim and star witness when she was a child, wants to recant her testimony and set her father free.
Olivia's son Noah is being baptized, and as she and the rest of the SVU team head out of the church, a woman named Michelle walks behind them, and the pastor stops her and she cries that her father is in jail and that it's her fault. The pastor gives her lawyer Bayard Ellis' contact details, and later Michelle and Ellis visit her father, who isn't happy to see her. Michelle tells her dad Derrick that she told Ellis the truth, that he never raped her.
Ellis goes to lunch with Olivia, and he tells her about Derrick, who was convicted of raping Michelle when she was six. Michelle tried to confess when she was a teenager but no one believed her. As an adult, she became an alcoholic but is now on a 12 step program and she wants to get her dad out of prison. Ellis wants Olivia to reopen the case to prove that Derrick is innocent.
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Michelle arrives at the station and tells Rollins and Amanda that the night before her father was arrested, her mother Audrey coached her to say that her daddy raped her, and the next morning, Audrey called the police to arrest Derrick.
Carrisi and Nick track down Audrey, and she tells them that Michelle does this often—she changes her mind and says strange things. Carrisi and Nick head to the prison, where Derrick tells them that he writes his children every week.
The next day, the detective who worked the case, McCormack, shows up at the precinct and tells them that they don't need to reopen the case. He says that Derrick is sick and that he raped his own daughter. McCormack says that he has stayed in touch with Audrey, and that he has saved her several times before Derrick's arrest because her husband was a violent man.
Rollins checks McCormack's story, and it turns out that he divorced his wife two years after he arrested Derrick. The team learns that McCormack was sleeping with Audrey, so Ellis heads back to court to ask for a retrial for Derrick.
At the retrial, Audrey takes the stand and says that she was only sleeping with McCormack so that she would have some protection for her children. Derrick gets on the stand next and tells everyone that he has been a devoted father even in jail as he writes his kids letters every week, and that he has never, ever raped Michelle.
The jury returns with a verdict, and they find Derrick not guilty of rape.
"Law & Order: SVU" airs on Wednesdays at 9 p.m. on NBC.
