Hell (Season 10, Episode 17)
Premise: A girl rescued from a Ugandan rebel army is attacked in New York, and the case pits SVU against a hidden warlord and a deportation order for the former child soldier who loves her like a sister.
- Air date
- Season/Episode
- Season 10, Episode 17
- 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 Alexandra Cabot (Stephanie March)
- Guest stars
- Gbenga Akinnagbe as Elijah Okello, Robert Wisdom as Father Theo Burdett, Cicely Tyson as Ondine Burdett, Mike Colter as Samuel Mbazzi, Julyza Commodore as Miriam Burdett
- Director
- David Platt
- Writers
- Amanda Green
Summary
“Hell” opens on a freezing night in Harlem, where a homeless man finds a girl of about ten lying in an alley, her throat slashed. The cold has slowed her bleeding and saved her life, and a hospital exam shows years of rape and beatings. Unable to speak, she draws the devil when asked who hurt her. Her MetroCard leads the squad to Staten Island, where a neighbor who has filed dozens of complaints about devil worship at St. Adrian’s Church says she lives with the parish priest, Father Theo Burdett, and his wife, Ondine; Theo identifies her as Miriam. The Burdetts adopted Miriam at a Kenyan refugee camp, where she arrived with no memory of her past, likely after being held by a rebel group. Ondine blames Elijah Okello, a former child soldier for Uganda’s Lord’s Resistance Army whom Miriam met in the church choir.
Elijah slips away when detectives come to his apartment, Miriam tells Benson in gestures that Elijah would never hurt her, and the Burdetts’ home is firebombed. He is caught at a university library with gasoline on his clothes. Elijah admits his past killings and, praying with Stabler, explains that Miriam recognized the man who enslaved her for three years, whom she calls the devil, and asked Elijah to kill him. Records lead to Samuel Mbazzi, a Ugandan janitor applying for citizenship. With no probable cause, Cabot asks an old classmate at the United Nations refugee agency for help, and photos from the International Criminal Court show that Mbazzi is Joseph Serumaga, a rebel commander known as the Devil of Gulu, wanted for war crimes. He is arrested with firebombs and a box cutter, and immigration authorities take him to The Hague for trial.
Miriam thanks Elijah, but ICE official Brett Trask moves to deport him: he left the rebels after turning 18, so an immigration judge has barred him from asylum. Cabot’s contact says the UN would treat him as a victim, but it cannot overrule an American court, so Elijah takes sanctuary at St. Adrian’s.
Spoiler, the ending: When agents serve him the deportation notice, Elijah grabs an agent’s gun and holds Father Theo and 13 young choir members inside the church. Stabler and Fin talk him into freeing the children, and Fin leads them out. Inside, Elijah says he wants the gun for himself, but when Father Theo needs a doctor, Stabler persuades him to give it up. As Stabler brings him out and shouts that he is unarmed, Elijah is killed. Miriam says he believed he had to die so people would notice child soldiers, and Father Theo tells Stabler to tell Elijah’s story.
Why it stands out
- Executive producer Neal Baer worked with the Enough Project, a group campaigning against the Lord’s Resistance Army, to portray child soldiers truthfully, and the episode was the first television episode filmed on location at the United Nations building.
- Cicely Tyson, cast at short notice, plays Miriam’s adoptive mother, Ondine, and Mike Colter plays the warlord hiding as Samuel Mbazzi.