Law & Order: SVU (4/17/2007) Being Born Again Isn't Just For Christians

A typical rapist van is cruising down the road with a Latin woman, a fat italian guy, a mute Haitian kid, and a little white girl singing Jesus hymns...n,o this isn't the set-up for some horrible joke. It's the set-up for this week's Law & Order: SVU.

Dun Dun!

The van crashes after the driver gets into a shouting matching with the little white girl. Wait..this isn't just any little white girl, this is Elle Fanning, the sister of accomplished annoying actress Dakota. Oh yay, there are two of them. The van crashes in the Hudson River and we see that the children are handcuffed to the seats. Detectives Stabler and Munch arrive on the scene just as they are pulling the van out of the river. The two children escaped, but the wounds around their wrists alert the detectives that the children had been handcuffed. The kids won't talk to anyone...at first. Dani Beck is on the scene and soon becomes the little white girl's BFF. When Detective Stabler sees Dani's rapport with the victim, he has to think about baseball to prevent himself from sporting wood.

Back at the station, Detective Fin reports that the van was registered to Frank Hovis. He and Munch go to Frank's mom's house to track him down. She denies knowing his whereabouts, but the detectives ignore her rights and eventually find him hiding in a broom closet. He identifies the adult woman in the van as Alma Cordoza and claims that she hired him to drive her and the children to Brooklyn. They toss his ass into jail and that is the last we hear about Frank Hovis. Dani's interrogation of the little white girl reveals that her name is Eden and that the young Haitian boy is named Mark. Eden also states that she has a sister named Rosemary, but she doesn't mention that her sister was last seen getting pulled around by Tom Cruise as they fight off space aliens. Dr. George Huang's interrogation doesn't go so well with Mark. Mark gets fed up with Huang's dripping compassion and attacks him. Detective Stabler jumps in to save his colleague the embarrassment of getting his ass whipped by a kid and manages to get stabbed with a pen. Dani Beck, in some weird Freudian move, pulls out the pen from Stabler's shoulder and applies pressure to the wound, all the while giving him her bedroom eyes.

Detective Munch and Fin try to track down Alma Cordoza at an address that they got from a cabdriver who dropped her off the night of the van crash. The house is abandoned, but they find tons of children's fingerprints and a box of kids' clothes and toys stashed in a trashcan nearby. They also find a cassette tape that had been partially destroyed. Further investigation reveals that the house was owned by Ignatius Petty Adoption Company. As Munch and Fin are kicking down doors and trying to find the elusive Alma Cordoza, Dani Beck and Elliot Stabler are complimenting each other and laying down some serious sexual tension in the hospital room. Right when Detective Stabler grabs Dani's hand (probably to motion for a quick hand-job), his wife and daughter arrive to make sure he is alright. Ouch. Nothing induces cock-blocking guilt like a concerned wife and TEENAGE daughter. Dani bolts.

Detective Fin and Munch do not share meaningful glances, but instead track down Ignatius Petty to question him about the house and his adoption agency. Ignatius refuses to answer any real questions and denies knowing Alma Cordoza but Dani's relationship with the phone company allows the detectives to trace his call the minute they leave the office. The call leads Dani and Elliot to the Lydia Motel and Alma Cordoza herself. Munch and Fin interrogate her and she states she was providing a compassionate service to the community. The detectives then play her the tape found at the abandoned house that was reconstructed. It reveals a pretty f-ed up "rebirthing therapy" session. Apparently, this therapy is supposed to recreate the patient's birth, so that they can be reborn and start over. The reconstructed cassette tape proves that this is just as disturbing as it sounds and, ironically, this one ended with the child dying. Perhaps this was the controversial new "re-abortioning therapy"? The cops rush back to the abandoned house and find the corpse of a nine-year-old girl buried in the backyard. Doctor Melinda Warner states that the cause of death was that the girl choked on her own vomit during the rebirthing session. Funny, it was my mom that did all the puking when I was born, but in her defense, she was pretty drunk.

Eden ID's the dead nine-year-old girl as her sister, Rosemary. Alma Cordoza ID's one of the voices on the tape as Dr. Arlen Rieff, a psychotherapist who provides rebirthing instructions. Detectives Stabler and Beck go to his office and he admits to giving the instructions for the therapy over the phone and that he wasn't present for the actual death of the child. He says that the other voices on the phone were Rita and Bud Gabler and they had hired him to help. Stabler and Beck go the residence of Rita and Bud Gabler and it looks like a kid farm. Some sort of surreal-real-life-cabbage-patch-kids scene. The detectives eventually find a kid locked in a cage in the farmhouse and they arrest the Gablers.

The interrogation of the Gablers proves that they were part of the rebirthing session that killed Rosemary, but they lawyer up before any real evidence is gathered. Casey Novak shows up to give the Detectives more bad news. Remember that tape that proves everything? Well, it can't be used because by "reconstructing" it, the lab "altered" it and so it is inadmissible in court. Casey puts Dr. Rieff on the stand to testify against the Gablers, but his testimony actually works in the favor of the defense, because it portrayed them as compassionate foster parents trying to do whatever they could to help Rosemary. Casey tells Dani that she needs Eden to testify if they are going to put away the Gablers.

Eden is reluctant to testify because she is scared of Bud and Rita Gabler. She recalls being caged and having a water hose shoved in her mouth and turned on. After listening to Elle Fanning's voice all episode, I can kind of understand why they would want to just shut her up for like ten minutes. I mean seriously, it grates on my freakin' ears like nails on a chalkboard. Dani Beck, much like a lot of idiots, find this girl cute and agrees to let her stay with her during the trial. Eden is smitten with Dani Beck and desperately asks her to adopt her permanently. Dani's mind is made up pretty quickly when she is woken up in the middle of the night because Eden has lit her couch on fire a la Drew Barrymore in "Firestarter." As Dani works to put out the flames, young Eden yells, "I want to die" and I want her to just shut up. Too bad she is no longer a baby, because then you could just shake her and she would be quiet.

At the hospital, Eden tells Dani that she lit the fire so that they could always be together. This girl is going to grow up and make some unlucky man very miserable. Or perhaps, she may just be America's Next Top Model. Dani is truly shaken by the whole incident and just leaves Eden in the hospital.

Elliot Stabler tries to console Dani Beck and he is probably thinking that he could get a piece while she is so vulnerable. Dani tells him that she can't handle SVU and Elliot tells her that he believes she can. Dani then just asks him straight up if he is asking her to stay. Elliot tells her that it is a decision only she can make and is secretly bummed that she called him on his bluff, after all, he was just being nice. Elliot tells her that only she can make that decision and I think this may be the last time we see Dani Beck.