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"Identity"
SVU, Episode 6.12
Production number: E5215
First aired (US): 18 January 2005
First aired (UK): 20 June 2005
First aired (CAN): 18 January 2005
First aired (AUS): 11 May 2005
  th of 502 produced in SVU  
th of 502 released in SVU
  th of 1271 released in all  
Cragen Identity
Written By
Lisa Marie Petersen & Dawn DeNoon

Directed By
Rick Wallace

Summary[]

Plot[]

The murder of a debauched gangbanger leads the detectives to a pair of twins, one of whom is not all that she appears to be. The squad eventually learns that the girl twin, Lindsay, was born a boy but a botched circumcision led to her parents making her a girl at the recommendation of the sex therapist the twins are currently seeing. Due to the fact they're identical twins, but one was made physically female and was raised and treated as one, Doctor Preston Blair considers them to be the perfect way to prove that it's nurture and not nature that determines gender identity. The main problem with Dr. Blair is that instead of treating them as his patients, Logan and Lindsay are more like his test subjects and he doesn't seem to care what his research does to their emotional well being.

Doctor Hendrix reveals the truth to Lindsay when Lindsay desperately pleads to know how DNA proved it could've only been Logan that did it, as ADA Novak is taking her statement of what happened. Knowing something has always been wrong, Lindsay's world collapses and seeing his experiment completely ruined, Dr. Blair threatens to have the medical review board revoke Dr. Hendrix's license. While packing up her office in Bellevue, Hendrix informs Stabler and Benson that Lindsay has made the decision to change back to his original genetic gender. When they get the call to return to the station, Logan reveals to Benson and Stabler that their therapist has been molesting them for years: showing them pornographic images and even forcing them to enact sex with each other.

Blair is arrested for disseminating pornography to minors and makes bail three days later (thanks to Novak having a file clerk friend of hers "lose" the paperwork for a few days), but is murdered by one of the twins. However, the right amount of days have passed for all the estrogen to pass through Lindsay's (now answering only to Luke) system, so it's impossible to differentiate between Logan's and Lindsay's DNA. The only way to tell which one did it would be to get one to turn on the other, but the detectives know that that's never going to happen.

Cast[]

Main cast[]

Recurring cast[]

Guest cast[]

References[]

Quotes[]

Stabler: [to Carmen and Tiny] Ladies, sorry for your loss.
Carmen: I didn't lose. I'm high scorer.
Stabler: I'm talking about your gang brother, Luis.
Tiny: We ain't no 'bangers.
Benson: [looking at Tiny's nails] Sweetie, you've got "S.C.A." stenciled on your fingernails.
Tiny: Gotta belong somewhere, yo.
Stabler: Right, with a bunch of guys who abuse you?
Carmen: Assassins take care of us.
Benson: How? By using you as drug mules? Pimping you out? Beating you up?
Tiny: It's better than the crap I get at home.

Stabler: That's why the Feds are here: mail fraud, ongoing criminal conspiracy. They'll be trying you under RICO.
Carmen: Never heard of him.
Benson: Sweetheart, it's a law that'll keep you in jail till you're old and wrinkled.
Stabler: Unless you wanna tell me who can call the dogs off Katie.
Carmen: I ain't talking to no police! Let's go meet Rico, whoever the hell he is.

[about Katie's death]
Benson: Gangbanger cut her ear to ear. He was sending a message, cutting her vocal cords.
Dr. Warner: It was completely pointless.

Warner: I'm still waiting for DNA results from saliva off the bite marks, but I did run a chromosomal analysis to narrow down a few genetic traits.
Stabler: Great. We'll print up flyers, hope somebody recognizes her genes.

Benson: [while arresting Hector Ramirez] You're a real tough guy, huh? Killing a deaf girl while she's asleep!
Hector Ramirez: She wasn't asleep! She was awake and begging!
[Stabler knocks his head against a street light]
Benson: Careful with his teeth. We need them to make a cast.

Tutuola: Luis comes up here to rape Katie. Instead, he finds another banger tagging his turf.
Stabler: And he teaches him a lesson by making him his bitch?

Dr. Hendrix: How many children have you had who caused the death of their attackers? You have to appreciate how much that compounds the trauma of the sexual assault.
Benson: And you have to appreciate that this is an open homicide. He's gonna have to work with us.
Dr. Hendrix: I don't have to tell you the staggering statistics on how few boys report their rapes.
Benson: No, you don't.
Dr. Hendrix: And there might be other factors. If Logan is homosexual, he may feel he somehow brought it on himself.
Stabler: He's coming to terms with his sexuality. He's conflicted. It's a theory.

[about Lindsay]
Stabler: Why is she taking the blame for him?
Dr. Hendrix: They're twins. They develop closer bonds than most siblings. There are documented cases where one twin, thousands of miles away, knew the exact moment when the other one died.
Benson: What, Lindsay empathically sensed when Logan was attacked?

Benson: What the hell are they saying?
Stabler: It's a made up language, my twins had one when they were little.

Benson: [to Mr. and Mrs. Stanton about Lindsay] Well, we understand that you sent her to a sex therapist. Along with her brother.
Stabler: Is there something going on between them? Sexually?
Mrs. Stanton: Oh, my God. Of course not.
Stabler: If you know they're having sex and you've allowed it to continue under your roof, we can arrest both of you for endangering the welfare of your children.
Stanton: Okay, we're done here. Get out of my house.

[the detectives leave the Stanton house]
Benson: That pushed some buttons.
Stabler: He's just pissed they ran out of excuses.

Dr. Preston Blair: Any plastic surgeon will tell you it's easier to dig a hole than build a pole.

[about Lindsay]
Dr. Preston Blair: In order for the experiment to work, she has to look like a girl, be treated like a girl, and taught to act like a girl.
Stabler: Your experiment didn't work.
Dr. Blair: I disagree.
Benson: Lindsay's miserable.
Dr. Blair: What 14-year-old girl isn't?

[the detectives are interrogating a sex therapist who used some controversial experimental procdeures on teenagers]
Benson: Do you realize that disseminating pornography to a minor is a felony?
Dr. Blair: I showed them art books.
Elliot Stabler: Doc, I saw the 'art' in your office, and even I was uncomfortable with how many phalluses were on display.
Dr. Preston Blair: That's because you're a bourgeois American, completely uptight about sex. It's what screws up your children and turns them into sex offenders.
Elliot Stabler: ...You lost me at 'bourgeois.'

Novak: The wheels of justice move slowly. Especially when a file clerk friend of mine misplaces the paperwork.
Benson: Nice.

Benson: [after Dr. Blair is murdered and the Stanton twins are considered suspects] Can we charge both of them?
Novak: And what, have two separate trials? Dual theories of the crime give each of them grounds for dismissal.
Benson: They came up with the perfect crime.
Novak: Until you get one of them to flip.
Stabler: That's not gonna happen. They're way too close.

Background information and notes[]

  • Goof: When Dr. Warner shows the detectives a karyotype, the "Y" chromosome should be much smaller than the "X" chromosome. It is in fact an "X" chromosome with one of the legs blacked out.
  • Loosely based on the true story of David Reimer, a Canadian man who was raised as a girl after a botched surgical procedure and on the advice from a therapist, Dr. John Money.

Episode scene cards[]

1 2 3

Netty's Fruit Market
136 East 116th Street
Thursday, January 6

Saint Anne's
Homeless Shelter
330 Tenth Avenue
Thursday, January 6

Hanover Day School
88 East 91st Street
Friday, January 7

4 5 6

Stanton Residence
523 East 79th Street
Monday, January 10

521 East 79th Street
Tuesday, January 11

Office of
Dr. Preston Blair
Bellevue Hospital
Thursday, January 13

Previous episode:
"Contagious"
"Identity"
Law & Order: Special Victims Unit
Season 6
Next episode:
"Quarry"
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