Directed By: Pratibha Parmar
When an alert teacher reports 14-year-old Beth Lee missing her parents are oddly secretive about her whereabouts. It turns out she's been kidnapped by a pedophile (real name Nick) who has brainwashed and seduced both of them, and brainwashed her into believing that he is the Messiah, that his baby (which she is carrying) is God's baby, and that they are destined to found God's church together. The detectives find Beth and return her to her parents with relative ease, but Nick just keeps coming, trying to coerce her parents into letting him marry her and eventually convincing her to run away for the same purpose. Finally a strategy is found to get Nick out of Beth's life for good ...
Tropes
- Adaptational Mundanity: The episode adapts out the wilder parts of the Robert Berchtold/Jan Broberg story note because Reality Is Unrealistic.
- And Now You Must Marry Me: Nick offers to spare Beth's family further hardship if she marries him.
- Blackmail: Nick and his Amoral Attorney threaten to expose all their victim's secrets, including his sexual relationship with each of her parents, which will play poorly in their religious community.
- Bookends: The episode begins and ends with happy Mother's Day-related bonding scenes between Benson and Noah.
- Brainwashing: Nick convinces Beth that he is the Messiah, that they are destined to found God's church together, and that she is carrying "God's baby" (actually, his).
- Bystander Syndrome: Averted, Beth's brother's teacher listens to an offhand remark that he thinks his sister is not going to come home, takes it seriously, investigates and calls the police, kicking off the events of the episode. In contrast Beth's teachers took no notice of her disappearing from school for more than a week without explanation.
- Depraved Bisexual: Nick seduces both of Beth's parents in order to get to her.
- Determinator: Nick just keeps coming after Beth: adopting a secret identity, joining her church and seducing both of her parents in order to get to her, grooming her for three years before taking her away to his cabin; continuing to insist on the legitimacy of their relationship after the cops catch them in their love nest together; using the plea negotiation conference to try blackmailing all parties into letting him marry Beth; and then; when none of that works, convincing Beth with scripture to run away and marry him anyway.
- Devil in Plain Sight: Nick makes no secret of his interest in spending unsupervised time with kids, and the detectives are bemused that Beth's parents would hand their teenage daughter off for more than a week to a man they know only as a member of their church congregation (or so the detectives think at the time), simply because he's so nice. Even after being arrested Nick makes no attempt to hide his evil intent and gets away with it for an uncomfortably long time.
- Family Relationship Switcheroo: at the end of the episode Beth's parents say "We're going to raise the baby as our own" which may mean merely that they are going to welcome the baby into the family ... or it may mean they are going to pass Beth's daughter off as her sister.
- Faux Affably Evil: In the plea negotiation conference Nick insists "We're all on the same side here. Don't we all want what's best for Beth?" and then proposes his preferred resolution: that he be allowed to marry his 14-year old victim to make the whole situation go away, else his Amoral Attorney will smear her family on the witness stand and reveal all their personal secrets. Nick's claimed desire to "protect her for the rest of her life" is thrown into doubt by the fact that he previously seduced a 12-year-old girl and her mother and then abruptly discarded them both when it became clear he was not going to be able to take the 12-year-old to the cabin he takes Beth to.
- Good Cop/Bad Cop: Rollins has offended the very mature Beth by treating her as a child, so Benson reprimands her, explaining by way of apology that Rollins isn't used to dealing with such a mature young woman since her kids are younger. Beth assumes Benson has kids in college, and not contradicted in this assumption, opens up to her on the basis that Benson is going to treat her like one of them.
- Good Girls Avoid Abortion: In the end, it's decided Beth will not get an abortion.
- Hiding Behind Religion: Nick joins Beth's church in order to seduce and brainwash her.
- Horrible Judge of Character: Beth's family and the rest of their church are convinced that super-creepy Nick is a good guy even after he disappears with Beth.
- Justice by Other Legal Means: The squad and Beth's family find it hard to get Nick out of her life, given how brainwashed she is, so her mother pretends to consent to her marriage in order to trick her into letting the hospital sample the DNA of her fetus so Nick can be arrested for statutory rape.
- Lighter and Softer: No one dies or is subjected to violence in this episode which ends happily, in contrast to the previous episode which was about a girl almost the same age who had been raped, impregnated, and killed, and it opens and closes with happy bonding scenes between Benson and Noah.
- The Main Characters Do Everything: SVU detectives have the free time to get involved in a missing persons case, going well out of their jurisdiction to investigate even though even the supposed victim's own parents don't consider her missing.
- Properly Paranoid: Beth is right to believe Nick's claim that outsiders are going to disbelieve her interpretation of their relationship and try to tear it apart. The plot is finally resolved when Beth's mother runs a scam on her, pretending to consent to Beth marrying Nick in order to get him locked up.
- Refuge in Audacity: Carisi goes in to the plea deal conference committed to settling for no less than a felony deal. Nick's counteroffer is ... he should plead guilty to nothing at all and be allowed to marry his underage victim. Carisi, flummoxed, has to leave the conference empty-handed.
- Ripped from the Headlines: The episode repackages the real-life story of Robert Berchtold,note who repeatedly kidnapped 12-year-old Jan Broberg with her cooperation and married her, having brainwashed her and seduced both her parents.
- Villain with Good Publicity: Nick gets to take extraordinary liberties with children, and gets away with it for an uncomfortably long time even after being exposed, because everyone is convinced he's such a good guy.
- Weak-Willed: Beth and her parents are extremely susceptible to being taken advantage of and brainwashed, especially her mother who insists Nick could not have kidnapped her daughter because he's so nice even after she has been rescued from his cabin. The detectives Lampshade this tendency in her parents when the latter are found to have consented to let a man take their teenage daughter away, just the two of them, for a trip of more than a week. The parents' compliance becomes a problem when it comes time to prosecute Nick since technically there was no kidnapping.
