Written By Tara Butters and Michele Fazekas
Directed By Arthur W. Forney
Olivia is called to interview a heavily pregnant twelve-year old girl called Melanie (Holliston Coleman) who claims to have a husband. She confronts the man known as Abraham (Jeff Kober) in a building who lives in a building with several children. He proceeds to barricade himself inside the building and kills all the inhabitants inside. The detectives find out they are dealing with a fanatical cult whose leader is loose on New York.
This episode contains examples of the following tropes:
- Bait-and-Switch: The audience (and the characters) are lead to believe that Benson will be forced off the case when she has a bit of a breakdown over it while Stabler seems horrified but determined. In fact it's Stabler who is forced to go home as not only is he in Heroic Safemode (which makes him a loose cannon) but similarities between the victims and his own children ensure he can't hope to remain objective.
- Blasphemous Boast: What ultimately causes Eugene Hoff's downfall is when he orders Melanie to decide whether he or Benson is telling the truth and then shoot the liar. Then he tells Melanie that Olivia is evil and she and the cops are there to kill him because he is "greater than God". Melanie promptly shoots him because "nobody is greater than God", meaning that he had told a lie, and he had just told her to kill the liar.
- Becoming the Mask: Olivia accuses Eugene of this and mocks him for it.
- Believing Their Own Lies: Even though he is nothing more than a con artist that is really good at deceiving people, it's shown that Eugene might as well genuinely believe the bullshit he spouts, something which the heroes call him out on.
- Broken Bird: More or less the detectives by the beginning. Benson and Tutuola are the ones most affected by the childrens' murder at the start of the episode to the point where Benson breaks down in tears to Huang, and Tutuola voluntarily takes time off to be with his son.
- Can't Kill You, Still Need You: Hoff keeps Melanie alive solely because once she gives birth, he can access the trust fund Melanie's late grandparents set up for her.
- Con Man: What Abraham Ophion/Eugene Hoff ultimately is. He was arrested four times in the past for check forgery, counterfeiting, identity theft, and various fraud, tried to fund his own church to get tax exemption and the only reason he keeps Melanie around is that she has a 2 million dollar fund that will become available after she becomes 21 or has a baby, which is why he impregnated her in the first place.
- Creepy Child: Abraham's children for the brief time they appear just standing around and being unnerving. Just like you'd expect from children raised by a cult.
- Cult: Eugene/Abraham leads a Branch Davidian style religious cult that has completely brainwashed his followers and has similar apocalyptic beliefs.
- Cult Defector: The team interviews a couple from Hoff's cult who found him in their four-year-old daughter's room, in the process of taking off his pants. The family left the cult then and there.
- Disappeared Dad: Melanie's father ran away and left both her and her mom at Eugene's mercy. Subverted when it's revealed that Eugene killed him for his money and hid his corpse.
- Death of a Child: At the start of the episode, Abraham has one of his six children murder the others and commit suicide when the police try to raid his building. The detectives are pretty affected by it to the point Captain Cragen has to appoint psychological help for them.
- False Prophet: The detectives deal with Abraham Ophion, a pedophilic priest who has convinced his followers that he is a prophet.
- Gory Discretion Shot: When SVU storm Abraham's house after multiple gun shots are heard, they are greeted by a traumatized police officer who tells them "They're all dead". When they enter the house, the shots carefully shy away from gory shots of the murdered children, showing only meaningful imagery like the children lying peacefully on their backs (thankfully no Boom, Headshot!), bloodied up toys, a child's hand with a pool of blood nearby, etc—and the horrified looks on the SVU's faces.
- Knight in Sour Armor: During Munch & Huang's psych evaluation, Huang notes (and visibly admires) that despite Munch being the resident cynic, he is still repulsed by the evil that people do and that Being Good Sucks (meaning deep inside, he's an
Iron Woobie). Munch muses on the words and has a look of uncomfortable realization on his face. - Hoist by His Own Petard: During Abraham/Eugene's Villainous Breakdown, he exclaims that he is "Greater than God" (among other things). This is where Melanie realizes that he's a liar and shoots him. Melanie explains to Olivia that no one is greater than God (a teaching that Eugene certainly drilled into her and her fellow Cult members).
- Informed Ability: Abraham/Eugene was described by those who knew him as very charismatic and charming. From what we see of him, it's kind of hard to believe, but we're supposed to believe it anyway.
- Interrupted Suicide: When Abraham gets cornered by the cops during a setup, he tries to slit his own throat. Benson tackles him because he hid Melanie and if he dies, they would have never found her.
- It's Up to You: Benson and Munch are left to investigate the case after Stabler and Tutuola take leave due to being emotionally compromised. (Stabler is forced to take leave while Tutuola takes it himself.)
- Meaningful Rename: Eugene Hoff took the name Abraham Ophion after the Biblical one because he had multiple wives and spawned many children. One of his female followers renamed herself Sarah after Abraham's wife.
- No Celebrities Were Harmed: Eugene Hoff was based on David Koresh
, a heretical Christian terrorist that also lead a militarized cult and practiced polygamy with his female followers, including underage. Lampshaded in-universe when Huang says that Koresh also had a 10-year old wife and when a cop finds a gun stash in one of the cult's hideouts, he compares them to the Waco incident where Koresh met his end. - Offing the Offspring: Eugene was the father of all the children in the cult except Melanie, and they were all killed on his orders.
- Old Man Marrying a Child: 40+-year-old Abraham Ophion/Eugene Hoff to 12-year-old Melanie Cramer The marriage is not legally binding (Abraham's only doing it for access to Melanie's trust fund), but it's treated as a real marriage by the cultists.
- Pædo Hunt: As if brainwashing adult women to be his sex slaves wasn't bad enough, Eugene does it to little girls too.
- "The Reason You Suck" Speech: Benson delivers an epic one to "Sarah" amid Berserker Tears after they realize that she was the one who called Cragen to inquire if her son had been killed.Olivia: Don't try to tell me for a minute that you believe this is right, because I know you don't. (...) Now, those women out there might be brainwashed, but you're not. You know exactly what he is: a murderer and a child rapist."Sarah": That's not true!Olivia: You knew who he was and you let this happen! You let all those children die!"Sarah": It was God's will.Olivia: No, Sarah, it was your will! You can blame God, and you can blame Abraham, but we all know the truth! YOU did this! You sat there and you watched as a man raped one of your children and then murdered the other! You might as well have killed them YOURSELF!!!
- Sex Slave: The female followers in Eugene's cult are separated from their husbands, sons, and brothers and forced to sleep with Eugene.
- Shout-Out: George Huang uses his FBI badge number to acquire a phone tab. The number is 2317616; the same number as Special Agent Dana Scully in The X-Files.
- When they finally found John Cramer's remains behind a wall, Munch exclaims "Here's Johnny".
- Taken Off the Case: Stabler is pulled off of the investigation into cult leader Abraham Ophion after the mass killings of the children of Ophion's followers, as Stabler's post-incident review has him confess that he saw a dead child wearing the same kind of pajamas as his own children, leading Dr. Huang to believe that Stabler will not be able to stay objective in the case.
- Teen Pregnancy: A particularly horrifying preteen example with the twelve-year-old Melanie. She's stated to be around thirty weeks pregnant, meaning she had to have gotten pregnant when she was eleven. Not only that, it's confirmed that she has given birth to another child in the past, meaning she probably got pregnant the first time when she was around ten years old.
- Villainous Breakdown: When Abraham/Eugene is trying to convince Melanie to shoot Benson at the end, he loses it.Eugene: All these men have come to kill me!Benson: Shut your mouth, Eugene.Eugene: WHY? BECAUSE THEY KNOW! THEY KNOW THAT I AM GREATER THAM MAN, I AM GREATER THAN GOD! AND THEY ARE AFRAID OF WHAT I CAN DO!
