Valerie Sennet (Michael Michele) was the villainess of "Burned", episode 8.11 of Law & Order: SVU (airdate January 9th, 2007). She was the ex-wife of Miles Sennet, having ended their marriage due to Miles' alcohol and drug abuse. Valerie placed a restraining order against Miles, but the order received no extension when the judge believed that Valerie was falsely accusing Miles to benefit herself during the divorce. Despite Miles' attempts to redeem himself for his past behavior, the vindictive Valerie continued to limit Miles' visit with their 12-year-old daughter Tessa, moving around often to prevent him from knowing where they lived.
When the social worker supervising Miles' visits with Tessa cut a visit short as Tessa was asking her father about what a Dallas headhunter was, Miles used a tracking device to find out where Valerie and Tessa were living to continue the conversation. When he learned that Valerie was planning to move to Dallas without telling him to separate him from Tessa, Miles became angry and attacked Valerie in the shower. But after coming to his senses, Miles left the house without further harming Valerie. But the evil Valerie, seeing an opportunity to permanently keep him from their daughter, reported him to the SVU detectives for supposedly raping her. She insisted that Detectives Benson and Stabler not question Tessa, claiming she wanted to protect her. When they defied her order, Valerie recanted her claims just as Miles was arrested, leading to a vicious verbal fight between the two before Valerie was escorted away. She later refiled the charges against Miles when the detectives arrested her for filing a false report and telling her that Miles would gain custody of Tessa if she went to jail.
Miles was arrested and remanded with bail after he confessed to assaulting Valerie, and Valerie left the courtroom without going over her statement with Novak. Stabler, after talking with Valerie's neighbor Denise Fielding, learned that Valerie had had a boyfriend (later identified as Phillip Anderson, an investigator who worked for the attorney that handled Valerie's divorce). Soon after, however, Valerie was once again attacked by Miles for her false accusation, this time being set on fire after Miles poured a bottle of gasoline on her. She was left critically burned and, when questioned by Benson before she was to undergo surgery, Valerie still adamantly claimed that Miles had raped her. Valerie was ultimately proven to be a liar when Benson realized that the "evidence" they found in Valerie's rape kit was from her sexual encounter with Phillip. It was later confirmed by Stabler as he and Benson talked outside her apartment that Valerie had died of her injuries.