Law & Order: Special Victims Unit: Season 8, Episode 1

Informed

A young woman, Haley Kerns (Kristen Bush), shows up at a hospital emergency room beaten and with her head shaved. Despite signs of sexual assault, she demands only a morning-after pill and refuses a rape kit. Kerns is accosted on the street by Benson, who pleads with her to submit to the rape kit. Benson follows Kerns back to her apartment but is asked to leave when Kerns locks herself in the bathroom. Benson does so, but not before taking Kerns' soiled underwear from her assault for a DNA analysis. When she returns to Kerns' apartment, she finds the woman missing and encounters Agent Dana Lewis (from season 7's "Raw," played by Marcia Gay Harden), who reveals that Kerns is her confidential informant on an eco-terrorism investigation. After Stabler is wounded while following a lead on Kerns' whereabouts, Benson and Lewis must find Kerns and get her to cooperate in preventing a terrorist bombing.