Spellbound (Season 18, Episode 18)
Premise: A publicist says a celebrity healer raped her at his ayahuasca retreat although she took no drugs, and SVU sets out to prove he hypnotized her.
- Air date
- Season/Episode
- Season 18, Episode 18
- Starring
- Lt. Olivia Benson (Mariska Hargitay), Det. Odafin “Fin” Tutuola (Ice-T), Det. Amanda Rollins (Kelli Giddish), Det. Dominick “Sonny” Carisi Jr. (Peter Scanavino), ADA Rafael Barba (Raúl Esparza), Judge Karyn Blake (Ami Brabson), Defense Attorney Rita Calhoun (Elizabeth Marvel)
- Guest stars
- Stuart Townsend as Declan Trask, Kristen Hager as Abby Clarke, John Ellison Conlee as Jack Roe, Akintola Jiboyewa as Lt. Richard Hill
- Director
- Jean de Segonzac
- Writers
- Story: Brianna Yellen & Robert Brooks Cohen & Céline C. Robinson; Written by: Gavin Harris & Kinan Copen
Summary
“Spellbound” begins when publicist Abby Clarke attends a weekend retreat run by Declan Trask, a rich spiritual healer who guides guests through ayahuasca, while her boyfriend, Steven, stays home. The next day Steven brings her to SVU. Abby says she skipped the drug and sat alone in the meditation room until Trask brought her a glass of water; she grew dizzy and heavy as he kept talking, and he had sex with her while she could neither move nor object. Trask, son of a wealthy hedge fund manager, tells Rollins and Carisi that she agreed and denies drugging her. Guests say he fixated on Abby all night and carried water into the room, and one saw her crying there.
Trask’s DNA matches, but Abby’s tests show no drugs or alcohol. She recalls him promising her a journey to a higher plane of enlightenment and calling her a beautiful ragdoll. A dismissed 2014 lawsuit leads to Rachel Sykes, who accused Trask of rape in New Jersey after a clean drug test and later died of cancer; her recorded statement matches Abby’s almost phrase for phrase. The squad suspects hypnosis. Trask’s old university, which expelled him for drug use, points to Jack Roe, the rehab counselor who cured his heroin habit through hypnosis and later taught him the method. In a recorded talk set up by the police, Roe claims he kissed a patient in a trance, and Trask assures him that hypnosis can lead to sex and that it gives women what they want. Trask is arrested.
At trial Barba argues that Trask disabled Abby with words instead of drugs. Defense attorney Rita Calhoun has Abby read her retreat application, which calls her relationship with Steven stale, and Steven walks out. Calhoun then produces a phone recording Trask made of the encounter, in which Abby says yes, and Judge Karyn Blake admits it. Calhoun offers a plea to second-degree assault with no sex offender registration; Barba considers it, but Abby wants a verdict. Trask testifies that he never hypnotized her and has never been arrested. In rebuttal, Philadelphia Lt. Richard Hill says he arrested Trask in 1995 with pills and heroin after a crash, as Trask fled a house where his 19-year-old friend lay dying of an overdose.
Spoiler, the ending: In closing, Barba likens hypnosis to a date rape drug and tells the jury that Abby’s recorded yes therefore means nothing. The jury convicts Trask of first-degree rape. Afterward Abby thanks Benson and says Steven has ignored her calls for three days; Benson tells her she did nothing wrong and that he may need time.
Why it stands out
- Stuart Townsend, who played the vampire Lestat in the 2002 film Queen of the Damned, guest stars as Declan Trask.
- Elizabeth Marvel returns as defense attorney Rita Calhoun, and Ami Brabson presides as Judge Karyn Blake.