Manhattan Transfer (Season 17, Episode 17)
Premise: A raid on a party where underage girls are trafficked to powerful men leads SVU to two Vice detectives, a nun who infiltrated the ring and a Catholic school tied to Tucker’s family.
- Air date
- Season/Episode
- Season 17, Episode 17
- Starring
- Lt. Olivia Benson (Mariska Hargitay), Det. Amanda Rollins (Kelli Giddish), Det. Dominick “Sonny” Carisi Jr. (Peter Scanavino), Sgt. Mike Dodds (Andy Karl), ADA Rafael Barba (Raúl Esparza)
- Guest stars
- Abigail Savage as Nina Kelly, Robert John Burke as IAB Captain Ed Tucker, Jonathan Cake as Monsignor Mulregan, Michael O'Keefe as Father Eugene O'Hannigan, Camila Perez as Cara Gutierrez
- Director
- Alex Chapple
- Writers
- Story: Julie Martin & Warren Leight & Brianna Yellen; Teleplay: Kevin Fox & Brendan Feeney
Summary
“Manhattan Transfer” opens with SVU watching a sex party where teenage girls serve a room of powerful men, including Judge Wheeler, a councilman, two state legislators and a prosecutor from the Bronx. When a fight breaks out and a gun appears, the squad moves in, and two guests, Detectives Tom Russo and Anton Jefferson, reveal themselves as Vice officers who say the raid ruined a two-year undercover operation. Their captain, Igor Gerbic, asks SVU to back off. Among those detained is Nina Kelly, a nun who says she has spent months inside the ring trying to rescue girls. She tells Benson the two Vice detectives are rapists and brings her to a church shelter run by Sister Ida, where Cara Gutierrez, a former victim, says Russo and Jefferson forced girls into sex acts at the parties and took turns raping her.
Benson brings the allegation to IAB Capt. Ed Tucker, but Russo and Jefferson insist the parties are run by a street gang and will not name their real target. Several of the girls attend St. Fabiola’s, a Catholic girls’ school in the Bronx where Tucker’s estranged cousin, Father Eugene O’Hannigan, is a counselor. Tucker visits him and asks about Cara, and Monsignor Mulregan warns that Nina is on psychiatric leave. Cara is then found dead in her room of a heroin overdose, which the medical examiner leaves undetermined. Her last visitor was Father Akintola, a fill-in priest who heard her confession that day. Tucker accuses Eugene of tipping off the traffickers until Benson pulls him away.
Benson hides Nina at her apartment, but when Nina learns that Tucker is Eugene’s cousin, she accuses Benson of setting her up and leaves, saying she will never talk about the ring again. Mulregan then goes to Barba, claiming that he and Eugene reported the Vice detectives to Tucker a year earlier and that Tucker buried it. When Barba asks whether she is involved with Tucker, Benson does not deny it and insists he is innocent. Tucker tells her that IAB’s Group One will question him about trafficking, corruption and murder, and warns her to stay out of it.
Spoiler, the ending: Benson is summoned to One Police Plaza. She returns to pack her office, tells Dodds she is out of SVU effective immediately, and informs Rollins and Carisi that Sergeant Dodds is now the squad’s acting commander. The episode ends there, to be continued in “Unholiest Alliance.”
Why it stands out
- First of a two-part story that concludes in the next episode, “Unholiest Alliance.”
- Benson’s romance with IAB’s Ed Tucker, who once arrested her, comes to light and costs her command of the squad.