‘Law and Order: SVU’ star Mariska Hargitay helped solve thousands of real-life rape cases

Mariska Hargitay’s crime-solving efforts have gone off-screen.

In NBC’s “Law & Order: SVU,” the actor plays Olivia Benson, a detective investigating sex-related crimes in Manhattan. But in recent years, she’s also played a critical role in helping to eliminate the national rape kit backlog, a Thursday episode of the “Dateline: True Crime Weekly” podcast reveals.

The podcast tells the story of Detroit prosecutor Kym Worthy, who in 2009 discovered over 11,000 untested rape kits collecting dust in a police evidence room. Each kit represented a sexual assault reported to the Detroit Police Department between 1984 and 2009, podcast host Andrea Canning said.

Worthy, who was horrified by the police’s dismissal of what was “basically a crime scene,” made it her “mission” to get the kits tested. But with each test priced anywhere from $1,200 to $1,500, “we’re looking at millions and millions of dollars,” Worthy said. She began a campaign to raise the money to get the kits tested — but it wasn’t enough.

That’s when Hargitay stepped in.

The Emmy Award-winning actor, who for years had supported survivors of sexual assault through her nonprofit Joyful Heart Foundation, testified with Worthy before Congress in 2017 on national rape kit reform.

“After we were finished testifying, I kind of grabbed her and asked her to come to Detroit to help us,” Worthy said on the podcast. “She said she would, and she did.”

“We had a breakfast where we invited legislators who were not returning my calls,” she continued. “She shows up and took pictures with all of them. And I am telling you, that legislation that helped us crack this problem in Michigan sailed through.”

It took 13 years of fundraising and advocacy, but by the fall of 2022, they’d tested all 11,000 kits — and solved more than 5,000 cases. They also discovered 22 serial rapists, Canning told Today in a Tuesday interview.

“It’s having a ripple effect across the country,” Canning said. “It’s making changes everywhere, for police departments, for prosecutors’ offices.”

Worthy’s and Hargitay’s efforts are also detailed in the 2018 HBO documentary “I Am Evidence,” which Hargitay produced and appears in.

“A lot of people just don’t know about this problem, and I was one of those people,” Hargitay says in the film. “And then you meet people like Kym Worthy and you see what she’s doing. You sort of can’t help but say, ‘What am I doing?’ ”

Hargitay’s collaborators on the project, Trish Adlesic and Geeta Gandbhir, lauded the actor for giving advocates like Worthy a platform.

“She is such an extraordinary voice in this. She used every bit of her power to shed light on the darkness around sexual assault and domestic violence and child abuse,” Adlesic said.

“She watched the film over and over and over and made sure everything was done right. A lot of people in her position might not be so hands-on, but she was very invested and gave a lot of herself,” Gandbhir said.