Law & Order: SVU doesn’t shy away from brutal cases, and the series just wrapped its 25th season. Since the procedural has been on the air since 1999, it’s no wonder that several key characters aren’t around anymore.
John Munch’s (Richard Belzer) partner Monique Jeffries (Michelle Hurd) was a big part of SVU until the beginning of season 2. However, the detective had a pretty shocking exit, along with a memorable final plotline. Why did Hurd stop playing Monique Jeffries on SVU?
Why did Monique Jeffries leave SVU?
Monique Jeffries left SVU after she shared during a psych evaluation that she was intimate with someone who the team thought had committed a sexual assault. Of course, the unit has to be careful about dealing with this sensitive topic, and Jeffries got in trouble.
According to Express.co.uk, there might have been a reason why Michelle Hurd stopped playing her character. Hurd was reportedly unhappy with the storylines she was given and wanted more for Jeffries. After leaving SVU, Michelle Hurd starred in many other TV shows, playing Courtney Brown on E.R. and Rachel Gray on the 90210 spinoff.
In the season 2 premiere, “Wrong Is Right,” Jeffries was no longer allowed to be part of the Special Victims Unit. She quit in season 2, episode 16 called “Runaway” because she didn’t want to work an office position after spending so much time as a detective. Her exit was very different from when Elliot Stabler (Christopher Meloni) exited SVU.
Monique Jeffries’s SVU storyline came to an unforgettable end when she pursued a lawsuit and said the Special Victims Unit discriminated against her. She decided to stand up for herself once she knew her career, as she knew it, was over. While Jeffries’s coworkers noticed that she began acting differently, which is why she was fired, she was reacting to the fact that she almost died while working a case.