Throng

law & order: svu
ritual (14/25)

The ‘Law & Order’ spin-off following New York’s elite special victims unit continues its fifth season. In tonight’s instalment, the apparent sacrifice of a young African boy leads the detectives to a childtrafficking ring.

When two workers in Central Park make the grim discovery of a child’s dismembered body, the SVU detectives are called in to investigate. Near the body are candles and two blood-stained bowls, which lead the officers to suspect that the young victim had been killed in some kind of ritual – possibly to do with the Santería religion.

Benson and Stabler trace the candles to a Santería group, but its leader denies that any of his congregation would have been involved in murdering a child. “This is outrageous,” he says, holding up a newspaper that describes the killing as a ‘voodoo slaying’. “Santería’s a peaceful religion. We’re not murderers.” Nevertheless, Benson and Stabler get a warrant and return to process the centre –but find no evidence that the boy was killed there.

The detectives are also having trouble identifying the young victim. After performing tests on the boy’s hair and bones, ME Warner tells Benson and Stabler that he had come to New York from Nigeria, and had only been in the city for four weeks. A check of immigration records shows that all recent Nigerian arrivals are accounted for, which means that this boy must have been brought into the country illegally – possibly with the specific intention of sacrificing him.

Wondering if anyone has reported a missing child to the Nigerian consulate, the detectives head there to make enquiries. They discover that several calls have been made by a young girl who has been trying to track down her brother. The calls are traced to a mansion on Riverside Drive, where a 12-year-old Nigerian girl called Na’imah is found working as a slave. She admits to calling about her brother, Ajani – and when she mentions that Ajani has a distinctive scar on his abdomen, the detectives realise that he is the murdered boy.

Mrs Laymon, the wealthy, elderly woman who lives at the Riverside Drive mansion, is arrested on slavery charges. She claims that she is doing Na’imah a favour by providing her with a job and accommodation, but the detectives do not buy it. Mrs Layman eventually confesses that she bought Na’imah from a Long Island warehouse.

At the warehouse, the detectives find a group of frightened children who have been chained up and left to die – locked in by the man who rented the storage space. Some of the children remember Ajani, and tell the detectives that their friend was taken away by a white man who gave him candy. The police go back to the Santería centre to ask about any white people who practice the religion, and discover that a woman named Maggie Shaye bought some of the candles that were used in the ritual.

Maggie is a dealer in African art, and the detectives visit her at her gallery. They notice that she has an ikengi, a special doll that both Na’imah and Ajani had been given by their mother. Maggie says that the doll was a gift from her husband Allan (Michael Emerson, ‘Lost’), who in turn claims that he bought it from a street vendor. But when evidence to the contrary is found in his office, Allan starts shaping up to be a prime suspect. How was he involved in Ajani’s death – and why?