'The Real SVU': We kicked open the courtroom doors and got justice for sex-crime victims

From: usatoday.com

I helped create 'Law and Order: SVU' 20 years ago. Now I'm telling the story of how the pioneering 'Real SVU' pursued justice for sex-crime victims. By Linda Fairstein

 

There were no Special Victims Units in any police or prosecutors officers in America when I graduated from law school in 1972.  I was offered a position — the seventh woman to join the legal staff of 200 men — in the great office of the Manhattan District Attorney. 

 

I met my first rape victims one year later, when I was 26 years old. I had already learned the very ugly truths about cases of sexual assault: They were the only crimes in the penal laws of every state that required more evidence than the word of the accuser to allow her to go forward. Most days, no matter how credible each of them was — woman, man or child — I had to tell them that our legal system deemed them not competent to repeat their stories to a jury nor to seek justice in a court of law.

When I became leader of the newly created sex-crimes unit in our office in 1976, my three colleagues and I had no template to guide us in doing our work. We fought first to change the archaic laws that had been handed down to us from 17th century British jurisprudence — literally, to kick open the courtroom doors to allow victims to testify. 

 

We then had to develop ways to work shoulder to shoulder with the New York Police Department's Sex Crimes Unit, to learn how better to investigate these cases so that any evidence in support of the victim’s case could be preserved. There was only one advocacy group in the city to which victims could turn for emotional support — a grassroots organization, most of its members survivors themselves who had been denied access to court years before.

We accomplished more "firsts" than I can count on fingers and toes. We were first to devote resources to taking date and acquaintance rape cases to trial; to recognize and address the special needs of child victims; to call out the potential lethality of domestic violence situations; to deal with drug-facilitated rapes and the issues unique to their investigation.

 

We were first to creatively apply to a judge for court-ordered surveillance of a health care professional’s office when we had credible evidence that he was molesting sedated patients; to understand the needs of victims who were raped by addicts using dirty needles at the height of the 1980s AIDS epidemic, making the crime a virtual death sentence; first to use DNA — even before judges ruled it admissible in court — to both exonerate and incriminate scores of suspects. 

And those things were all accomplished by the mid-1980’s. The list of innovative and courageous approaches my colleagues took in moving these cases forward is — and continues to be — breathtaking.

 

Twenty years ago, while I was still leading what is now known as the Special Victims Unit, I had a call from Dick Wolf, creator of the Law and Order television series. He was in pre-production of a spinoff that he called Law and Order: SVU. He wasn’t asking me to be part of his team, but he was hoping I would spend time with two of his leading actors — Mariska Hargitay and Stephanie March — to explain our work. Not only did I enjoy that opportunity, but it was the start of two friendships I cherish to this day.

 

People often commented that Wolf had ripped my professional life from the headlines, just as he did with the crimes he showcased. In fact, this series, one of the most popular in the history of television, brought the issue I have cared most about in my professional life out of the darkness. It shined a terrifically bright light on subjects that often were unspeakable before he set them down in our living rooms.

 

I stayed in that job for 30 years, because I thought it was the most important work I would ever do. I continue my advocacy for victims of violence to this day. I watch with enormous satisfaction as women step forward to say "me too," remembering a time that there was a stigma attached to every one of those accusers who had the fortitude to get as far as a police precinct or my office. 

 

I applaud their bravery and their strength, and I know that the blueprint for the path every single one of them followed was forged by the women and men who have made these investigations and prosecutions their life’s work for the last four decades. There is a real SVU in Manhattan, and I am fiercely proud of its stories.

 

Linda Fairstein is a former Special Victims’ prosecutor, a best-selling crime novelist, and the host and producer of THE REAL SVU, a Lifetime special airing May 21. Follow her on Twitter: @LindaFairstein