SVU’s Mariska Hargitay Is Under Fire for ‘Pro-Police Propaganda’
Advocates are calling for Hargitay to quit the show for misrepresenting sexual assault survivors' experiences.
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A criminal justice reform publication is calling for SVU’s Mariska Hargitay to “quit the show for good” and claims the actress is “promoting the false narrative that police need more money to end the rape kit ‘backlog.’”
Published in The Appeal’s newsletter this week, the report slams Hargitay for being selected as one of Glamour’s 2021 “Women of the Year,” and call the decision “unfortunate” because “she and everyone else involved with SVU are complicit in what is likely the single worst piece of pro-police propaganda produced over the last few decades.” The publication also accuses SVU of “laundering the reputation of the NYPD and its sex crimes division.”
On SVU, the longest-running primetime live-action show in US television history, Hargitay plays Captain Olivia Benson, the commanding officer of the New York Police Department’s Special Victims Unit. Inspired by her work as Benson, Hargitay started the Joyful Heart Foundation in 2004 to help end the backlog of rape kits, which refers to the hundreds of thousands of collected rape kits across the country that sit untested in police departments, supposedly because they lack the funding to test them. As a solution, Hargitay’s foundation calls for more funding for police to end this backlog. Notably, experts — as well as The Appeal’s reporting — have emphasized that the backlog exists not because of lack of funding, but because police departments — which receive substantially more funding than public resources for abuse victims — choose to not send rape kits to labs.