Sorry, I’ve never responded to a post before, so I wasn’t sure if I should submit this here or send it to you as a question. Would love to remain anonymous if that’s an option. If not, that’s cool. But I wanted to vent a little bit about Law & Order:SVU. Where am I going with this? Well, I’m a survivor of sexual assault, and SVU wrote an episode based on my case a couple of years ago.

All of the Law & Order shows acknowledge to some extent that stories are “ripped from the headlines,” but we’ve all seen the pre-show disclaimer that the characters are fictional. So, perhaps an element of a story is inspired by a high-profile/celebrity case, but in theory they take great creative liberties in how the case is resolved (or isn’t). But then I started recognizing more and more specific details related to stories I’d read about in the news— one that stands out in memory is the episode based on the DSK case, which followed the real case and its conclusion almost exactly.

But that was an extremely high-profile case, and I never gave much thought to the stories that seemed a bit more generic. Until I turned on my TV a year after I was assaulted and saw a character that looked like me who went to a school near the one I did who was shopping at a bodega in the neighborhood I lived in whose boyfriend HAD THE SAME JOB AS MINE DID IN REAL LIFE. I then proceeded to watch a fictionalized version of the worst day of my life on my television. 

At the time the episode aired, by case was long from closed, so no, it did not and could not follow my entire case as it existed. But the initial scenario was almost exactly what happened to me, and they figured out enough about me to know what school I went to do, what I studied, and even what my then-boyfriend did for a living to create a character that resembled me. Sure, she had a different name and a different hometown. So, technically, she’s fictional. 

How does this feel? Maybe some people will think I am being dramatic. But it destroyed me. The worst thing that has ever happened to me—and, hopefully, will ever happen to me— was cut up and repackaged as entertainment for some fucks at NBC to make hundreds of thousands of dollars off of. I didn’t get any say in it, and clearly these people had to do some digging into my background to create the episode (there were details included that were most certainly NOT published in any news articles, and trust me, I read all of them). There were actors who played my boyfriend and my fucking PARENTS. How am I supposed to not feel used and violated and objectified? What the fuck am I supposed to be, flattered? 

So, that is my personal beef with SVU. I want people to know that this is a real thing that happens, and when it does, it can be extremely damaging to the survivor involved. I’m in a good place now, and my case had a happy ending (a life sentence for the piece of shit who attacked me), but it definitely set me back in my recovery.

I remain conflicted in some ways because I would like to think that the show can be helpful and informative, perhaps to a survivor or a relative of one. But its other issue (and this shouldn’t be surprising) is that it gives a lot of misinformation about how court proceedings work and how survivors are interviewed, treated, etc. You will fight through tons of bureaucratic red tape, and your rape kit will cost two thousand dollars, and you will have to emptily repeat the details of the horrible intimate violation of your body to total strangers hundreds of times, and you will wait years while court dates get pushed back, and your friends will check out of your life because they can’t deal with it, and then someone will make you into a television episode so even more strangers can gather ‘round and fucking gawk at you, and still others can profit from it.

All of my friends who know this about me still watch the show. So, you know. “Dramatic.” Yeah.

Sigh.

Thank you.