Behind The Show
In the New York Police Department, there is a real sex crimes unit. It is known as the Special Victims Squad and each borough of New York has its own SVS. However, they do not investigate any cases involving murder, child pornography or robbery. The SVS can assist in the investigations of murder and robbery if a sex crime is involved, but child pornography cases are handled by a special unit.
Law & Order: Special Victims Unit has had much controversial subject matter in its episodes and has loosely based some cases on real-life incidents.
In 2002, Hargitay took a crisis counselling course and is a certified rape crisis counselor, serving on the boards of Safe Horizon and Mount Sinai's SAVI program.
The Joyful Heart Foundation (or JHF), founded by Mariska Hargitay in 2002, is a non-profit organisation dedicated to helping survivors of sexual assault. It has developed some programs using dolphin/human interaction in the wild to help survivors in their healing.
