Rape Incident
In the Season 3 episode "Employee of the Month", Melfi is walking alone through the parking garage to her car when she is attacked by a man. He grabs her from behind and, after she attempts escape and cries out for help, proceeds to drag her to the stairway of her building, where he violently rapes her. He leaves her lying helpless in the stairway, crying.
At the hospital, her ex-husband, Richard arrives, glad that she is okay. Once he discovers the man who raped her also has an Italian surname, he begins to feel embarrassment for himself and the Italian people, indicating that rapists make Italians like him look bad. Melfi feels his reaction is ridiculous and irrelevant. Although her rapist is arrested, he is subsequently released because of an improper procedure performed by police. This infuriates Melfi, in shock that he was released. She comments to her psychiatrist and colleague Dr. Elliot Kupferberg, "I could have that asshole squashed like a bug," meaning that she could have Tony arrange for the rapist to be killed. More shock comes when Melfi is in the fast food restaurant where the rapist works. She sees his smiling picture on the wall as Employee of the Month (hence the episode title). She is tempted to tell Tony what happened but is torn between wanting to see her rapist punished and not wishing to involve herself in Tony's world. During her second session with Tony after the rape, Melfi is overcome by her inner conflict and breaks down. When Tony attempts to console her and asks "Do you want to say something?", she regains her composure and responds, "No."
Read more about this topic: Jennifer Melfi
Famous quotes containing the word incident:
““It is of the highest importance in the art of detection to be able to recognise out of a number of facts which are incidental and which are vital.... I would call your attention to the curious incident of the dog in the night-time.”
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—Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (1859–1930)