Taboo (Season 7, Episode 14)
Premise: A newborn abandoned in the trash leads detectives to a brilliant student who denies ever being pregnant, and to a secret she shares with her father.
- Air date
- Season/Episode
- Season 7, Episode 14
- Starring
- Det. Olivia Benson (Mariska Hargitay), Det. Elliot Stabler (Christopher Meloni), Det. John Munch (Richard Belzer), Det. Odafin “Fin” Tutuola (Ice-T), Capt. Donald Cragen (Dann Florek), ADA Casey Novak (Diane Neal), Dr. George Huang (BD Wong), ME Dr. Melinda Warner (Tamara Tunie)
- Guest stars
- Schuyler Fisk as Ella Christiansen, Zeljko Ivanek as Everett Drake, Alexandra Neil as Mrs. Drake, Michael Lerner as Morty Berger, Annie Golden as Varla
- Director
- Arthur W. Forney
- Writers
- Dawn DeNoon
Summary
“Taboo” starts when a dog digs a human placenta out of the trash on the Upper West Side, and a newborn boy is found in a box nearby, cold and dehydrated but alive, his cord clamped with a coffee bag clip. A homeless woman, Varla, who insists she is pregnant, turns out to have pseudocyesis, a false pregnancy. A T-shirt from a bar trivia contest leads to Ella Christiansen, 20, an engineering student at the Manhattan Institute of Technology whose pillowcases match the sheets in the bag. She denies ever being pregnant. After a heated interrogation, Stabler tells Cragen he cannot handle this suspect, and Cragen sends him home to his children. A search of her dorm turns up nothing.
Ella collapses after class, and at Bellevue Dr. Marnie Aiken treats her for an infection caused by retained placenta. Ella then claims she never knew she was pregnant and that she was raped. A Newark hospital reports that she gave birth in 2004 with no baby to show for it; remains were later found in a dump, but she said the child was stillborn and was never charged. Her father, Newark city councilman Everett Drake, whom she tracked down after growing up without him, says he did not notice either pregnancy. Charged with attempted murder, Ella says the baby’s father is a married man she will not name, and her lawyer, Morty Berger, protests a bail condition barring her from getting pregnant again. Warner’s DNA test then shows the baby is a product of incest.
Benson confronts Drake at home, where Ella is staying on bail, and tells his wife. Drake admits the relationship, saying he knew she was his daughter before they first had sex, but he has an alibi for the morning the baby was left. The prosecution explains that adult incest is a low-level felony that would also implicate Ella. At trial, Huang testifies that Ella may suffer from postpartum psychosis, and Drake, contradicting what he told Benson, claims he coerced her.
Spoiler, the ending: The jury acquits Ella on both counts, citing mental disease or defect, and she is sent to a state psychiatric hospital. There Benson reveals that she was herself conceived in rape, and Ella admits she got rid of both babies alone and that the first was not stillborn; Newark prosecutors are to be told. When Drake tries to take the healthy baby as his son, he is served with an order barring contact and hands the infant to Benson.
Why it stands out
- Schuyler Fisk later called Ella one of her more memorable roles and said Mariska Hargitay was especially kind to her during filming.
- Benson tells Ella that she was herself conceived in rape and still does not know who her father is.