Detectives Benson and Stabler had seen a lot of terrible things in their years on the job, but the case of Jazmin Burgess hit them harder than most. Jazmin was a sixteen-year-old model who had been dumped, beaten, and raped in front of Roosevelt Hospital. It was a brutal crime, and Benson and Stabler were determined to find out who was responsible.
The first question they had was why Jazmin had been out alone after midnight. They soon discovered that Jazmin had been signed with a modeling agency, and they began to investigate the agency and the people who worked there.
As they dug deeper, they found that Jazmin had been working with a photographer who had been supervising her last shoot. The photographer had booted her out because he thought she was "too heavy," and Benson and Stabler wondered if this had something to do with Jazmin's attack.
Their investigation led them to discover that Jazmin had been taking high levels of drugs, and they began to suspect that the modelling agency had been pressuring her to lose weight and take drugs to stay thin. It was a disturbing revelation, and Benson and Stabler were sickened by the idea that young girls were being exploited in this way.
To make matters worse, Stabler was dealing with his own issues at home. He and his wife Kathy were worried that their daughter Maureen was anorexic. Stabler's disgust with the whole situation was aggravated by the fact that he couldn't protect his own daughter from the kind of pressure that Jazmin had been under.
In the end, Benson and Stabler were able to track down Jazmin's attacker and bring him to justice. But the case had left them both shaken, and they knew that there were many more girls out there who were vulnerable to the same kind of exploitation.
As they left the precinct that day, Benson and Stabler were both thinking about the young girls who were being forced to grow up too fast. They knew that they couldn't save them all, but they were determined to do everything in their power to protect the ones they could.
Sometimes, the world can be a dark and scary place, but we must never lose hope. We must always fight for what is right, and never give up on those who need our help.
