Emmy Eckhouse is a fourteen-year-old girl who was sexually assaulted by her father, and who subsequently set him and her mother up to be murdered.
Background[]
On February, Emmy and her family went skiing in Vermont. Emmy's mother Joan, who worked at the New York Gay Rights Coalition, had to leave early, leaving her husband Sidney and Emmy alone together in a cabin. Sidney raped Emmy that night and continued sexually assaulting her for months afterward, which led to Emmy contracting herpes. Emmy consulted her family's former housekeeper Carmen Vazquez, who was more of a mother to her than Joan was, about what her father put her through. Carmen tried to tell Joan about the abuse, but Joan did not believe her.
As the rapes continued, Emmy told Carmen she was thinking of killing herself. Knowing that Sidney might never stop, Emmy, Carmen, and her brother Jimmy Vazquez planned to kill him and Joan. Emmy told Jimmy and Carmen to attack on Friday night, knowing that both of them would be home, and to write "Queers" on the wall to make the police think it was a hate crime. Emmy would be with her boyfriend Rob Fisher during the transaction.
Home Invasions[]
Unfortunately, Rob's father wouldn't let Emmy come over. When Joan answered the door, a masked Jimmy shot both her and Sidney to death, and inadvertantly wounded Emmy when the bullet that shot Sidney went through all the way and hit Emmy in her head. The SVU detectives at first believed the attack was a hate-crime, but began to suspect sexual abuse when Emmy experienced a herpes outbreak. They then discovered that Sidney had the same strain of herpes. Emmy admitted to detective Olivia Benson that her father had been abusing her, but claims she never told anyone. The detectives confronted Rob, but he denied knowing about the rapes, even though he knew she couldn't stand being around her father and had begged Carmen to come back.
The detectives questioned Carmen, who admitted to knowing about the sexual abuse. When forensic evidence proved that Emmy was never the intended target, Detectives Rollins and Amaro suspect that Jimmy had been the assailant, and lied to him that Emmy had died in the hospital to get him to confess. Plagued with guilt, Jimmy confessed to the shooting, but claimed that he planned it by himself. Carmen, who was in another interrogation room at the time, also tried to take the blame. Benson believed Emmy might have told Carmen, but Captain Cragen told Benson to confirm it. In the hospital, Benson and Amaro persuaded Emmy to tell Rob what happened between her and her father. After serious reluctance and resistance since Rob was there, Emmy caved and then admitted she had orchestrated the plan to stop her father from raping her and to punish her mother for failing to protect her. Benson and Amaro then placed her under arrest, despite Rob's pleading protests to leave her alone, but she assured him she was "free" and they hugged one last time. (SVU: "Home Invasions")