Terrorized (Season 18, Episode 1)
Premise: A lost boy who pulls a gun on Benson leads SVU to a planned shooting in Central Park, and his mother, charged with murder, says the attackers raped her for years.
- Air date
- Season/Episode
- Season 18, Episode 1
- Starring
- Lt. Olivia Benson (Mariska Hargitay), Det. Odafin “Fin” Tutuola (Ice-T), Det. Amanda Rollins (Kelli Giddish), Det. Dominick “Sonny” Carisi Jr. (Peter Scanavino), Deputy Chief William Dodds (Peter Gallagher), ADA Rafael Barba (Raúl Esparza), Defense Attorney Rita Calhoun (Elizabeth Marvel)
- Guest stars
- Natia Dune as Ana Kapic, Tarek Bishara as Armin Sidran, Tino Tsutras as Luka Terzik, Marc Damon Johnson as FBI Agent Dan Conley, Robert John Burke as IAB Capt. Ed Tucker
- Ripped from the headlines
- Inspired by the Apple–FBI encryption dispute of 2016, in which the FBI went to court to force Apple to unlock an iPhone used by one of the shooters in the December 2015 San Bernardino attack.
- Director
- Alik Sakharov
- Writers
- Story: Brianna Yellen & Robert Cohen & Celine Robinson; Written by: Rick Eid & Julie Martin
Summary
“Terrorized” opens with Benson at a Central Park playground with Noah when an officer brings her a lost four-year-old who speaks no English. The boy pulls a loaded Glock from his backpack and aims it at her until she talks him down. Rahima Babic, the woman seen with him, has died in a bicycle accident. At her Astoria apartment the squad learns the boy’s name, Ali, and finds a farewell note from his mother, Ana Kapic, a Bosnian waitress on a student visa who gave her employer a false address. A print on the gun leads to Luka Terzik, and his abandoned Queens apartment holds weapons and Arabic writing, bringing in the Joint Terrorism Task Force and the FBI.
Luka’s rent is paid by his half brother, Armin Sidran, and when detectives call Luka from Armin’s phone, he dumps his own. It is locked, and Barba wins an emergency order directing the maker to open it, but the company refuses to help. A traffic camera spots Luka and Ana entering Central Park, and police converge as the shooting begins. Off-duty officer Tom Flannery is killed and four people are wounded, one of whom, college student Sophie Lewis, later dies. Luka is killed by police, and Ana is arrested with a rifle on her shoulder. Her lawyer, Rita Calhoun, says Luka and Armin raped and beat Ana for five years and forced her to take part. Deputy Chief Dodds and Barba want Benson to shelve the rape claim until after the trial; when she refuses, Dodds tells her that her doing her job cost his son his life.
Ana tells Benson the brothers raped her and beat her with belts two mornings before the attack, and a rape kit backs her up. DNA shows Armin, not Luka, is Ali’s father, giving him a claim to the boy; Armin admits sex with Ana but denies rape. Benson testifies that she believes Ana, but the judge keeps the abuse out of the murder trial. Benson then urges Calhoun to take a deal, and Ana pleads guilty to first-degree murder after Barba quietly agrees to seek 20 to life and to pursue Armin. The best evidence, Luka’s videos of the abuse, sits on the locked phone; a judge orders the company to unlock it under the All Writs Act, and it appeals at once.
Spoiler, the ending: Benson goes to arrest Armin, but federal agents take him first over his contacts with radicals in Afghanistan, to be held indefinitely. Ali will live with Ana’s sister, Shanik, in Bosnia, and Ana says goodbye to him. Later, with Noah and Tucker, Benson says she has never been happier but fears it will not last.
Why it stands out
- The Season 18 premiere aired on September 21, 2016; Deputy Chief Dodds’s grief follows the Season 17 finale, in which his son, Sgt. Mike Dodds, was killed.
- The episode sets Benson and Barba against each other over whether Ana is a victim or a killer, with Elizabeth Marvel’s Rita Calhoun on the defense side.