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| “ | Give it to me. Give it to me! Just take it, my little girl! | „ |
| ~ Alvin raping Sally Landry. |
Alvin Gilbert is the main antagonist of the Law & Order: Special Victims Unit episode "Fashionable Crimes". He is a fashion photographer and serial rapist who preys on the models he works with.
He was portrayed Fisher Stevens, who also portrayed Iggy in Super Mario Bros., Shady Shin in The Legennd of Korra, and Eugene Belford in Hackers.
Overview[]
Alvin is a fashion photographer who works for his brother Benno and his wife Claire, who run the high couture company House of Gilbert. Alvin uses his position to sexually harass and rape the models he works with, threatening to ruin their careers if they tell anyone what he did to them. Benno also frequently gets his brother out of trouble by paying the models he assaults to keep quiet. His assistant and erstwhile lover, Nora Wattan, also enables his predatory behavior by getting his victims drunk and taking pictures of the assaults so he can use them to blackmail the women into silence.
Twelve years prior to the events of the episode, Detectives John Munch and Fin Tutuola of the NYPD's Special Victims Unit investigated Alvin for the rape of Italian model Maria Carla. The case fell apart, however, after Benno got her to drop the complaint against his brother by making her the face of their new perfume. She tried to kill herself as a result of the trauma, but she eventually recovered and started her own modeling agency, and even sent some of her models to Alvin.
"Fashionable Crimes"[]
Alvin invites 17-year-old aspiring model Sally Landry to pose for a photo shoot and starts groping her while taking the pictures; when she resists, he pins her to the floor and rapes her while Watten photographs the assault.
Sally reports the rape to SVU Lieutenant Olivia Benson and Detective Amanda Rollins, but she refuses to press charges for fear that her abusive boyfriend/"manager" Matt Kroger will find out. They eventually persuade her to come to the SVU station house to make a statement, but Matt, who hit her in the face after she told him what happened, comes with her and tries to take charge, seeming angrier that Alvin "cut him out" of negotiations than he is about the rape.
Benson sets up a meeting between Sally and Wattan, secretly recorded by Rollins and Detective Dominick Carisi Jr., in which Sally tells Wattan that she is pregnant with Alvin's child. Wattan replies that Alvin will "take care of it", while threatening to ruin her career if she tells anybody what happened. Rollins and Carisi use the recording to get a search warrant for House of Gilbert's office that yields several incriminating pictures of the rape; Benson, Tutuola, and Sergeant Mike Dodds arrest Alvin, who claims that Sally is trying to extort him.
During his interrogation, Alvin says that Sally consented to have sex with him as part of the "seduction of photography"; Benno and Wattan, meanwhile, say that Sally made up the rape to keep Matt from finding out that she cheated on him. Ultimately, however, Benson orders both Alvin and Wattan arrested for first-degree rape.
Assistant District Attorney Rafael Barba tells Benson to find other victims, so Tutuola, Rollins, and Carisi talk to several models whom he raped - including one he assaulted at gunpoint - but they all refuse to speak out against him. To make matters worse, Sally, at Matt's instigation, backs out of testifying for Barba's grand jury, Benno having paid him off to "change Sally's mind".
To save his case, Barba threatens to charge Wattan with child pornography to get her to testify against Alvin, while Benson tells her that he will abandon her to save his own skin. She sees the writing on the wall and turns over the videos she took of Alvin raping women in return for a lighter sentence. Barba charges Alvin with 10 counts of rape, which tarnishes House of Gilbert's image just as they are about to go public.
Rollins, Tutuola, and Dodds go to House of Gilbert's latest fashion show to arrest Alvin, only to discover that he has been shot in the chest and groin; he dies before the paramedics arrive. Benson and Dodds eventually discover that Benno killed him, having finally had enough of his brother jeopardizing his business.
External links[]
- Alvin Gilbert on the Law & Order Wiki
