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| “ | They got older, and I... didn't. | „ |
| ~ Denise Pikering describing her underage lovers. |
Denise Pikering, also known as Cassandra Sullivan, is the main antagonist of the Law & Order: Special Victims Unit episode "Pretend". She is a con artist who passes herself off as a teenager so she can have sex with teenage boys and trick other people into supporting her financially.
She was portrayed by Misti Traya.
Biography[]
Early life[]
Pikering was raised in an abusive home in Detroit, Michigan, and was arrested as a teenager for shoplifting. Social Services eventually took her away from her parents and placed her with foster parent Jeannie Hayes, who raised her with love. When Pikering turned 18, however, she aged out of the foster care system, and had to leave Hayes' house and live on her own.
She lived an itinerant lifestyle for a few years, traveling from state to state and sleeping in public parks. She was eventually arrested for vagrancy and told the police she was 16 and an orphan so she would be put back into the foster system, the only way she knew how to survive. She was adopted by another foster family and went to high school until she "turned 18" again, and then moved to another state and started the process all over again until she was well into her 20s. She also slept with several high school-aged boys, each one believing she was his age and considering her his girlfriend.
As years went by, Pikering landed at Allentown, Pennsylvania, where she lied to a social worker that she was Loretta Sheridan and was placed in a juvenile group facility. She attended a high school there and blended in with the students. However, the authorities became suspicious of her as they looked into her story, therefore she fled before they could figure out her scam.
After being adopted by a foster family in New York City, living under the name Cassandra Sullivan, Pikering started going to a local high school and dating a classmate named Riley Cuskey. Riley broke up with her, calling her "too needy", and she dealt with the rejection by having sex with his best friend, Scott Heston. Riley and Scott got into a fight over her that ended with Scott killing Riley so he could have her for himself.
"Pretend"[]
After Scott pleads guilty to negligent homicide, claiming that Riley's death was an accident, Pikering decides to get back at him by meeting with Assistant District Attorney Casey Novak and telling her about the love triangle between her, Scott, and Riley. She also tells Novak that Scott had severed Riley's femoral artery after learning about it in an anatomy class a few days before. Detective Olivia Benson of the NYPD's Special Victims Unit convinces Pikering to testify against Scott at his sentencing hearing to make sure he gets the most severe sentence possible.
The following day, however, Pikering is run over by a car driven by Scott's friend Keith, breaking her leg and jaw. While she is in the hospital, her doctors examine her DNA and discover her real identity. She is kicked out of school and her foster home, forcing her to move into a homeless shelter. Scott's attorney then charges her with statutory rape as a ploy to get Scott a lenient sentence for killing Riley and paying Keith to run Pikering over. Pikering convinces the trial judge to let her represent herself, and while cross-examining Scott gets him to admit to killing Riley in cold blood.
Benson and Stabler track down Hayes and get her to confront Pikering for scamming the foster care system; Pikering replies that she merely wants to be loved and cared for, and lied in order to escape the adult world she did not know how to survive in. The media picks up her story, and several of her high school boyfriends come forward and admit to having slept with her, outing her as a serial statutory rapist. She is then imprisoned for statutory rape and fraud.
Trivia[]
- Pikering is primarily inspired by Treva Throneberry, a con artist who posed as a teenage orphan despite being an adult.
External Links[]
- Denise Pikering on the Law & Order Wiki
