SVU Takes On Teen "Sexting" And Dating Violence

The case on last night’s Law & Order: SVU involved two “hot” news stories: dating violence (a girl was beaten unconscious by her boyfriend) and “sexting” (she sent naked photos from her cellphone).

To boot, the girl’s frustrated father had also just been laid off from Lehman, due to the economy, which initially led detectives to think that perhaps he had been the one beating her. The high school girl, Kimberly, was arrested on kiddie porn charges mainly because older bruises and cracked ribs indicated that she’d been suffering from long term abuse, and she wouldn’t identify who had been doing it to her out of fear. (It was one of two boys, both of whom denied involvement, of course)

After her arrest and appearance in court, she finally admitted that it was her boyfriend who had been beating her up regularly, so the prosecution moved to drop all charges. But the judge (Swoosie Kurtz) was a hard ass, found the girl guilty anyway, and sentenced her to a year in a juvenile lock up in Ohio. It was then discovered that the judge’s cousin ran that facility, and she had been receiving a commission for filling up beds, and had been convicting underage kids for frivolous charges for quite a while in order to make extra cash.