Law & Order SVU Recap 2/3/16: Season 17 Episode 13 Forty-One Witnesses

Tonight on NBC Emmy Award-winning producer Dick Wolf’s crime drama, Law & Order: SVU airs with an all Wednesday February 3, season 17 episode 13 called, “Forty-One Witnesses,” and we have your recap below. On tonight’s episode, a woman is raped outside of her apartment building and the crime is witnessed by several neighbors, but they neglect to call for help.

On the last episode, a murky date-rape case involving two high-school students proved challenging for the detectives, and it wound up ruining the futures of both of the teenagers involved. Did you watch the last episode? If you missed it, we have a full and detailed recap right here for you.

On tonight’s episode as per the NBC synopsis “a woman is followed home and raped outside her building, where several neighbors witness the crime but fail to call for help.”

Tonight’s season 17 episode 13 looks like it is going to be great and you won’t want to miss it, so be sure to tune in for our live coverage of NBC’s Law & Order: SVU at 9:00 PM EST! While you wait for our recap hit the comments and let us know how excited you are about the new season?

Tonight’s episode begins now – Refresh Page often to get the most current updates!

Tonight’s episode of Law & Order SVU kicks off with Rollins on the phone with Olivia – she is walking down the street with her baby strapped to her. She tells Olivia that she can’t wait to come back to work tomorrow – it looks like her maternity leave is finally over.

Meanwhile in a diner, a woman appears to be high as a kite and is buying drugs from a man in the corner. She collapses on the couch in the diner – a group of men come in and start groping her, one of them takes her purse and the other guy says he is going to take her home and helps her out of the diner. One of the customers in the diner videotaped the whole thing on her cell phone. They pass another woman in the alley and she takes out her cell phone to call the polie because she can tell something isn’t right.

The next morning Olivia and Rollins are called to the scene of the crime, someone found the woman passed out in the courtyard in front of her building at 7:00 AM, her name is Libby Parker. The ambulance rushes her off to the hospital because she has been outside in the cold all night and has head injuries, she was sexually assaulted. There are literally 100 appartments/windows facing the scene of the crime – but not one of the neighbors has come forward or even reported any shouting the night before.

Rollins and Olivia head to the hospital – Rollins keeps calling her babysitter to check in on the baby. She hangs up and flags down a doctor, but they won’t let her see the victim yet, they are still trying to stabilize her after the attack.

Fin and Carisi begin visiting all of Libby’s neighbors – a few of them say they saw or heard an assault, but they all just figured that someone else would have called the cops and didn’t want to be bothered. Outside, they run in to a man walking his dog, he insists he wasn’t home last night and didn’t hear or see anything strange last night. Basically, no one wants to deal with the police or help identify Libby’s attacker.

Dobbs tracks down the last place that Libby used her debit card – it’s the diner where the men picked her up. Just like at the apartment building, everyone there insists that they didn’t see anything or hear anything. The diner is a drug den, basically no one wants to deal with the police. Carisi finally finds the woman that videotaped them leaving the diner and she gives him the footage. They blast it all over the local news to see if anyone recognizes the three guys.

A woman calls in and says that she works at the local youth center – and she knows all three men, she identifies them as Ronnie Ellis, Juan Flores, and Willie Reeves. She says that they are supposed to be locked in at night, but they apparently got past the night guards. The woman put the three men in the game room while she called police. She leads Rollins to the room where she left them and all three guys are gone – they appear to have hopped out of the window.

Carisi and Fin hit the streets and start searching for the three boys – they find Will soliciting on the corner of the street and bring him in to custody. Will is basically shaking in his boots and crying that he didn’t hurt Libby, he swears that it was all his pals Ronnie and Juan. Olivia tells Carisi to get a warrant for Will’s phone – they are going to use it to contact his friends and lure them in.

Libby finally wakes up at the hospital – Olivia pays her a visit, but Libby doesn’t remember too much. She tells Olivia it was “like a bad dream” and she was floating outside of her body. Libby doesn’t remember her attackers or what they looked like. She says she went to the diner and a guy offered her a drug called Special K, and she blacked out. Libby doesn’t remember being assaulted or even leaving the diner.

Olivia and her team get a tip that Ronnie and Juan are on Atlantic Ave selling weed, they rush down there and spot the. Ronnie and Juan make a run for it, but Fin and Dobbs run them down and arrest them. At the police station, Ronnie insists that they helped Libby get to the apartment and then they left her there, they didn’t touch her. Olivia decides to try and talk to Will again – but he maintains that he is innocent.

They take photos of Ronnie, Will, and Juan back to Libby’s apartment, but none of her neighbors will pic them out of a line-up. At the police station, Professor Henderson shows up and says that he is going to represent Will. He is trying to cut a deal for him, and offers to have him testify – but Barba won’t negotiate with him.

Olivia and Dobbs finally catch a break. They found a second cell phone on Ronnie, but everything has been deleted on it. They do a trace and learn that someone called 911 from the cell phone the night before, but hung up after a few seconds. They track down the owner of the phone – her name is Maria Hernandez, and she has a black eye. Maria insists that she lost her cell phone, and she fell on her eye.

Olivia tells Maria she needs to finish what she started when she called 911 – and tell them what happened to Libby. She says that she saw her passed out with three guys around her, when she tried to call for help, Ronnie hit her and took her cell phone. They bring Maria down to the police station and she identifies Will, Juan, and Ronnie in the line-up.

Ronnie, Juan, and Will all insist they didn’t rape Libby – even though there is an eye witness. They head to court and Ronnie’s lawyer argues that the boys were just trying to help her, and nobody actually saw her get raped. The defense tears apart the witness’ testimony, and makes a mockery of Libby on the stand.

After court, Rollins and Carisi pay Libby a visit at her apartment after court. Carisi meets Libby’s sponsor, and questions him and learns that he witnessed the entire thing. Doug cries to Carisi that he fell off the wagon after the attack and got drunk, and he never called the ambulance. Carisi convinces Doug to show up at court and testify the next day.

At court in the morning Barba and Olivia are freaking out because they think that Doug is a no-show, he finally arrives – but is drunk. Carisi rushes him outside to get him some coffee and try to sober him up before he has to take the stand. Doug finally is sober enough to testify – he says that Will was holding Libby down while Ronnie and Juan “forced themselves inside Libby’s mouth.”

The defense can tell that Doug has been drinking – and points out to the jury that he is a drunk, and his testimony is pointless. Barba is able to save his testimony by doing a sobriety test and having Doug close his eyes and describe everyone in the jury. The jury seems pleased – and satisfied with Doug’s testimony, regardless of whether he was drinking.

The jury comes back with a verdict – all three men are found guilty, thank’s to Doug’s testimony.

THE END!

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