Trials (Season 10, Episode 1)
Premise: A foster child’s escape in a stolen van exposes his use in drug trials and leads Benson back to his birth mother’s unsolved rape, part of a pattern targeting single mothers.
- Air date
- Season/Episode
- Season 10, Episode 1
- Starring
- Det. Olivia Benson (Mariska Hargitay), Det. Elliot Stabler (Christopher Meloni), Sgt. John Munch (Richard Belzer), Det. Odafin “Fin” Tutuola (Ice-T), Capt. Donald Cragen (Dann Florek), ADA Kim Greylek (Michaela McManus)
- Guest stars
- Jae Head as Christopher Ryan, Julie Bowen as Gwen Sibert, Luke Perry as Noah Sibert, Sara Gilbert as Caitlyn Ryan, Lisa Strum as Tonya Majeski
- Director
- David Platt
- Writers
- Dawn DeNoon
Summary
“Trials” begins when seven-year-old Christopher Ryan leads police on a 20-block chase in his foster parents’ van and tells Benson and Stabler he fled because they hurt him. The same morning, Kim Greylek arrives as the squad’s new ADA, transferred from a Violence Against Women post in Washington. The foster parents, Gwen and Noah Sibert, deny any abuse, though Gwen admits the boy wears her out. Christopher then says Gwen takes him to a hotel where he must undress and she gets paid. Stabler and Fin, who has asked Cragen to transfer him away from Stabler, find a drug-testing clinic at the Lydia Hotel, where Christopher is in a trial of an experimental ADHD drug with Gwen’s consent. The Siberts take him home.
Caseworker Tonya Majeski brings over Christopher’s file, and Benson recognizes his birth mother, Caitlyn Ryan, as the victim in one of her own unsolved rapes. Caitlyn, unable to cope after the attack, gave Christopher up and met Gwen, also a rape survivor, in a support group. Christopher reveals he was in the next room that night, fitting Caitlyn into a pattern: a masked man who rapes single mothers of young boys, threatens the child and calls the woman a bad mother. Munch, at a bar with Fin to clear a suspect, reminisces about his old bar in Baltimore and the partners who have left him. Victims Emily Johannsen and Caitlyn both answered men on a dating site for single mothers who never showed up, and victim Natalie Clay did business with the Siberts. The men’s names, Dave and Danny Jones, belong to Noah’s old punk bandmates.
In a voice lineup Caitlyn picks Noah, but Emily and Natalie choose someone else, and Greylek will not take that to a grand jury. Gwen screams at Caitlyn in the squad room, and when Christopher sides with his birth mother, Gwen gives him up. A kiss Noah gives the boy supplies his DNA. Stabler, meanwhile, learns that his stolen credit card was taken by his daughter Kathleen, and Benson learns that a fourth victim, Annabelle Ashton, killed herself in Iowa. Noah’s DNA then matches the rape kit from Gwen’s own rape five years earlier. Noah claims the sex was consensual, and Gwen realizes she married her rapist.
Spoiler, the ending: Facing Greylek’s threat to charge the rapes as hate crimes, which would add 25 years, Noah pleads guilty and takes the maximum sentence. Fin learns his transfer is stalled and accepts that he is staying. Benson, meanwhile, tells a counselor that since a guard tried to rape her while she was undercover in a prison four months ago, she has been jumpy and sleepless, and asks for help.
Why it stands out
- Michaela McManus joins the cast as ADA Kim Greylek, a role she plays through the season’s 15th episode.
- Munch’s list of partners who left him includes Jeffries and Cassidy from SVU and Meldrick Lewis and Stanley Bolander from Homicide: Life on the Street, the series where Munch began; his Baltimore bar also comes from that show.
- Luke Perry and Julie Bowen play the Siberts, Sara Gilbert plays Caitlyn, and Days of Our Lives actress Mary Beth Evans appears briefly as Dr. Eichenberry.