Dr. Rebecca Hendrix is a psychiatrist who crossed paths with the Special Victims Unit and has a personal history with Detective Olivia Benson.
Background[]
Hendrix initially attended the police academy together with Benson. However, two years later, she decided to switch career paths and become a psychiatrist, believing that mentally ill suspects should be treated instead of being locked up. Hendrix eventually became a psychiatrist at Bellevue Hospital.
On SVU[]
Benson and Hendrix cross paths again during a case. When a schizophrenic rape victim, Miranda Cole, goes missing, Benson asks if she should have been kept in the hospital. Hendrix argues that they couldn't force her and that she was allowed to check herself out unless a court compelled her to stay. Benson accuses the mental health profession of medicating people long enough so they could be cut loose and that nobody monitors them until they become a criminal or a victim. Hendrix then asks Benson if her solution was locking them up, which Benson affirms. Hendrix then reveals why she left her previous job. (SVU: "Weak")
Hendrix calls the SVU squad when a nine-year-old girl named Holly Purcell, who survived a car accident with her parents, is believed to have been a victim of sexual abuse. Benson and Detective Stabler originally arrive on the scene, and ADA Novak gives them court-ordered permission to carry out the exam. Hendrix still needs the presence of the police to document the progress of Holly's exam. Though Hendrix prefers not to have any strange men in the room, Holly seems to take comfort in the presence of Stabler. When the test results confirm her abuse, Hendrix works with the detectives as well as her parents to try to find the girl's abuser. Originally, Holly is too terrified to reveal him, so Hendrix instead uses her talent and interest in art to try and identify the man who molested her. As a result, she pinpoints Mark Dobbins, a friend of the Purcell family, as the abuser. However, Dobbins is eventually proven innocent, after which further examination of one of Holly's drawings reveals the true identity of her abuser. (SVU: "Contagious")
Hendrix once again helps the SVU squad on the case of teenage twins, Logan and Lindsay Stanton. Because they were born in Bellevue, Rebecca pulls their medical files and tells Novak that she might want to subpoena them, saying that even though she couldn't say the twins were at risk, she saw several red flags. When Novak insists for more information, Hendrix replies that she had never come across such a heavily redacted report. Novak then asks her to order the complete files, but Hendrix said she couldn't do that because their therapist pulled her off of the case as soon as they were admitted, and that she'd already overstepped her bounds by reviewing the medical records. Novak then says that if there was a case, she'd have tainted it, but Hendrix replies that she had to find out why they were seeing a sex therapist. Later, Hendrix ends up telling Lindsay what the records said: that she was actually born a boy. Afterwards, the twins' psychiatrist Preston Blair finds out and threatens to report her conduct to the medical review board. She later informs Benson and Stabler that she lost her privileges at Bellevue and that she needed to prepare for a hearing over her license. When Stabler tells her she did the right thing, she replies, "For a cop." (SVU: "Identity")
After assaulting Pete Breslin in the process of intervening in Breslin's physical abuse towards his son, Stabler goes to see Hendrix and opens up to her about the abuse he suffered as a child at the hands of his father. (SVU: "Ripped")
Worried that Benson and Stabler might be too close, Captain Cragen orders them to undergo a psychological evaluation conducted by Hendrix. After she interviews Benson and Stabler separately, she informs Cragen that his suspicions were correct and that they are compromised as police officers because of this. When Cragen asks her if she recommended that he split them up, she replies, "If you want to lose your two best detectives." (SVU: "Philadelphia")
Appearances[]
- Law & Order: Special Victims Unit (3 seasons, 5 episodes):
- Season 6: "Weak" • "Contagious" • "Identity"
- Season 7: "Ripped"
- Season 8: "Philadelphia"