Tonight on NBC Law & Order SVU returns with an all-new Thursday, March 23, 2023 episode and we have your Law & Order SVU recap below. In tonight’s Law & Order SVU season 24 episode 16 “The Presence of Absence,” as per the NBC synopsis, “An Internet dating site becomes the source of terror for a young widow. Muncy struggles with Velasco’s absence.”
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Tonight’s Law & Order SVU episode begins at a bar, two women are checking out some men, Jenna and Zoe. They start looking at a dating app and then head to Zoe’s place, Jenna is using her profile, she finds someone and wants her friend to hook up with him. Zoe has had enough, she tells her she is tired, Jenna leaves the apartment.
Zoe is in bed, she can’t sleep, she turns over and looks at the app on her phone and finds a cute man. A week later, Zoe has a lot of DMs, she is at a restaurant with Jenna and shows her the messages, the enjoy a laugh. Zoe says she wants to meet this guy, Jenna is surprised she wants to meet him.
Zoe is home, her guy, Klaus Darcy, sent her lingerie, he tells her to put it on, go to the window so he can see her body, she does.
Jenna and Zoe show up at the station, Zoe says she thinks she was raped. She tells Finn that she met him online and he started messaging her a month ago. Their chat became kinky, they did BDSM stuff, he would give her fun orders, he sent her a chain and when she was with him, he would own him. He wanted to blindfold her with her dead’s husbands ties, he said grief had robbed her of her whole way of seeing things. She was thinking that he couldn’t get it up, he didn’t even try.
But last night, she told him stop but it was too late, he penetrated her and left her. She thinks he was embarrassed for not lasting long and he wasn’t very guy. They only ever communicated through the app, she doesn’t have his contact information. Jenna says the past years have been crazy, Zoe lost her husband the same month she gave birth to her son.
She and her husband Richard took her in. She warned Zoe not to get involved with this guy. A few hours after Richard left for work, Zoe revealed that she was raped. Jenna feels horrible, she pushed Zoe to get back on the market. The hot shower Zoe took got rid of the DNA, but there was semen on her clothes which confirms her story.
The perp went through a lot of trouble not to show his identity on the app, Olivia tells Muncy to scrape his social media. Fin gets a call, there is a DNA match to Zoe’s dead husband Brian. Meaning, it is a male relative of her husband. Olivia tells Zoe that she needs a list of Brian’s relatives. Zoe starts panicking, she thinks of Cooper, his nephew, the only one she can think of.
Muncy and Finn go to speak to Cooper, he claims to have been studying two nights ago. Muncy checks his phone, no dating apps. Muncy says they need a sample. He says he donates, it gets him $1500 a month, but because of confidentially they won’t give the names.
Olivia goes back to see Zoe, asks her more questions. She says she felt it go inside her, but it was pretty micro and it all happened really fast. The nurse gave her a morning after pill, she has taken it. She says she is so surprised because Klaus was so gentle.
Zoe gets a DM in front of Olivia, he says he didn’t mean to hurt her and wants to meet her one more time. They stage a setup, the team busts in and the the perpetrator was Jenna.
Olivia tells Zoe that Jenna had downloaded the app to her phone and it looks like Jenna had a fantasy of power of her life and over Zoe. Olivia gives Zoe her phone number and tells her that if she needs anything to call her.
Jenna is in the station, she says everything she did, she did for Zoe. She says Zoe was ready to go back out there, but she had no matches, so she staged it for her. She tried to get her pregnant because she always wanted a family. She remembered when Cooper told her how he made money in college. Zoe could never meet another Brian, but maybe she could help her make one.
It’s not rape, but Zoe didn’t agree to the act. Carisi wants to avoid a trial, they can’t make sense of this and he doesn’t want it to go in front of a jury.
In court, Jenna pleads not guilty and gets ROR.
Zoe is upset, she wants to speak to Jenna, she wants her to admit that she lied to her. Olivia tells her not to. Zoe doesn’t want Jenna to get away with it. Zoe says she will not lose this trial, she lost her husband and she can handle losing her best friend.
Zoe is on the witness stand, she tells about her dominant relationship with Klaus. She was never allowed to touch his body, it was dark. The games she consented to were over a month. The night of the assault, she was penetrated, she said no. Jenna tried to impregnate her, and she did not agree to anything. She talks about the controlled meet afterwards when Jenna was caught. Zoe thinks Jenna liked being Klaus better than she liked being herself. New evidence comes to light from the opposing attorney, Zoe and Jenna had sex before, they eperimented, they were naked together.
Carisi is upset, Zoe should have told him that she had sex with Jenna, the jury sees her as a liar now.
Jenna is on the stand, she says that Zoe needed Klaus, she knew she needed it. She assumed that Jenna knew she was Klaus, a continuation of the games they played in college. Carisi gets the lights turned out and asks Jenna what color is his tie, she doesn’t know. He brings someone beside him and asks her who is beside him, she says Zoe. But it is not, it is Richard, her husband. She has been married to him for ten years and couldn’t recognize him, but she wants Zoe to recognize her in the dark.
The verdict, Jenna is guilty of sexual abuse in the third degree. Jenna is remanded until sentencing.
THE END!
