When I first saw the opening of this SVU episode I thought it was going to be based on the Eigil Vesti homicide. The shot of one leather masked figure leaving the scene and another inside a deserted apartment house dead on a mat made me think. Of course the real story was bad enough, but what it led to was something quite different.
The dead body used to be a high school kid who did some extreme martial arts fighting for exhibit on line. The one who filmed it Dan Leonard brought the tape into the squad and got at least one local pedophile off that Benson and Stabler were zeroing in on.
On the periphery of all this is a kind of groupie girl hanging out with the teen combatants. Misti Traya gets the center of their attention when Leonard is killed and the thought with Diane Neal prosecuting the case is that Traya did it to protect her secret. Not only was she using an alias but she was 28 years old and still in high school and foster care.
This story is truly tragic. For whatever reasons and I've known a few in my life, that is people who just don't want to step into adulthood. They like to be teens forever and in her case she found foster care so satisfying that she wouldn't leave. Traya would just pick up and move to another area and work herself into the system as a homeless youth.
Traya may have issues, but she's not dumb. She pursues a legal strategy that is quite unorthodox when she's charged with Leonard's murder.
As for her own future, guilty or innocent, it isn't a bright one.
The dead body used to be a high school kid who did some extreme martial arts fighting for exhibit on line. The one who filmed it Dan Leonard brought the tape into the squad and got at least one local pedophile off that Benson and Stabler were zeroing in on.
On the periphery of all this is a kind of groupie girl hanging out with the teen combatants. Misti Traya gets the center of their attention when Leonard is killed and the thought with Diane Neal prosecuting the case is that Traya did it to protect her secret. Not only was she using an alias but she was 28 years old and still in high school and foster care.
This story is truly tragic. For whatever reasons and I've known a few in my life, that is people who just don't want to step into adulthood. They like to be teens forever and in her case she found foster care so satisfying that she wouldn't leave. Traya would just pick up and move to another area and work herself into the system as a homeless youth.
Traya may have issues, but she's not dumb. She pursues a legal strategy that is quite unorthodox when she's charged with Leonard's murder.
As for her own future, guilty or innocent, it isn't a bright one.