Possessed (Season 12, Episode 12)
Premise: A masked attack on a young woman reveals she was the child in a notorious series of abuse films, and the man acquitted of making them still walks free.
- Air date
- Season/Episode
- Season 12, Episode 12
- Starring
- Det. Olivia Benson (Mariska Hargitay), Det. Elliot Stabler (Christopher Meloni), Sgt. John Munch (Richard Belzer), Det. Odafin “Fin” Tutuola (Ice-T), ADA Gillian Hardwicke (Melissa Sagemiller), Dr. George Huang (BD Wong), Judge Barry Moredock (John Cullum)
- Guest stars
- Taryn Manning as Larissa Welsh, David Patrick Kelly as Orville Underwood, Devin Ratray as Eldon Balogh, Brian Justin Crum as Daniel Brooks, Peyton List as Young Larissa Welsh
- Director
- Constantine Makris
- Writers
- Brian Fagan
Summary
“Possessed” opens when Patrick Binder finds his girlfriend, Larissa Welsh, drugged unconscious and is beaten by a naked man in a mask who escapes. Larissa was given Rohypnol and shaved from the neck down, and her attacker dressed her in underwear marked “Brandy,” a name she hates. The same pattern appears in the rapes of two ten-year-old girls, Kelly and Paula, whose hair was put in pigtails; Paula also got a letter signed “Coventry.” Huang explains that its symbols are pedophile trading marks and that Coventry is a bogeyman name used to scare victims. While Munch screens a child-abuse film from the series, the detectives spot Larissa’s star-shaped birthmark on its young star: Larissa was Brandy.
A print lifted from a photo leads to Eldon Balogh, a convicted child molester, who poses as a hospital orderly and assaults Larissa again before Stabler and Benson catch him. Larissa says men still recognize her from the films. Balogh says he hunted Brandy for years and beat Orville Underwood, a man he met online, to get her real name. Underwood survives. Larissa explains that Underwood abducted her at ten and drugged and filmed her, while her foster parents never reported her missing, until an older boy, Daniel, helped her escape. Underwood was acquitted in 1996 because she never saw his face, and double jeopardy bars a retrial; he has since become a civil rights lawyer.
Underwood’s semen on a Brandy photo is not enough for Hardwicke, and after Balogh is beaten to death in jail, Underwood walks free and greets Larissa on the street as Brandy. Watching the films at Huang’s suggestion, Larissa recalls Daniel burying notes to his parents in empty jars, and a wristband she buried in a jar yields the DNA of Daniel Brooks, missing since 1995. The detectives find Daniel making abuse films with children of his own, and Benson talks him into freeing a boy he holds hostage. Underwood’s hidden novels include a how-to guide that Balogh followed, but the judge dismisses Hardwicke’s conspiracy charge for lack of any agreement between the men. At Rikers, Daniel refuses Larissa’s plea to testify.
Spoiler, the ending: That night Underwood calls 911 to say a woman he calls Brandy has broken in with a gun. Benson and Stabler arrive as Larissa shoots him in his bedroom, where he was abusing a young girl, Christina; Daniel had told Larissa that Underwood was still at it. Hardwicke calls it defense of a third person, and Larissa is not arrested.
Why it stands out
- Taryn Manning plays Larissa Welsh, and Peyton List plays her as a child; their scenes were filmed in December 2010.
- Sabrina Carpenter appears as Paula, one of the girls Balogh attacked.
- The episode aired on January 5, 2011, directly after “Pop.”