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| “ | Photographers and models - it happens. | „ |
| ~ Benno making excuses for his brother Alvin raping a model. |
Benno Gilbert is the secondary antagonist of the Law & Order: Special Victims Unit episode "Fashionable Crimes". He is the CEO of a fashion company who repeatedly covers up the rapes committed by his brother Alvin.
He was portrayed by Griffin Dunne.
Overview[]
Benno and his wife Claire run House of Gilbert, a high couture company centered on his designer dresses and perfumes. Benno also employs his younger brother Alvin as a photographer, earning millions from his celebrated pictorials - and who has a habit of sexually harassing and assaulting the models he works with. Benno buys the victims' silence by giving them more high-profile work, while also threatening to ruin their careers if they tell anyone what Alvin did to them.
Twelve years before 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, but Benno talks her out of pressing charges by making her the face of House of Gilbert's new perfume and giving her money to set up her own fashion label.
"Fashionable Crimes"[]
After Alvin rapes 17-year-old aspiring model Sally Landry during a photo shoot, she reports the crime to SVU Lieutenant Olivia Benson. Benno once again covers for Alvin by saying that Sally consented to sex with Alvin and accusing her abusive boyfriend, Matt Kroger, of trying to extort money from House of Gilbert. Ultimately, however, Benson and her detectives get a warrant for Alvin's studio and find pictures of the rape taken by Alvin's assistant and lover Nora Wattan and arrest them both for rape.
Benno hires a high-priced lawyer for Alvin who gets him released on bail, while abandoning Wattan. Assistant District Attorney Rafael Barba prosecutes Alvin for rape, but his case is endangered when Sally, his star witness, backs out of testifying after Kroger intimidates her. Tutuola and Detectives Amanda Rollins and Dominick Carisi Jr. later find out that Benno paid Kroger $50,000 - officially listed as "seed money" for a new fashion design - to force Sally to drop the charges against Alvin.
Barba threatens Wattan with child pornography charges to get her to provide pictures she took of Alvin's previous rapes, allowing him to press 10 additional charges against Alvin. The news infuriates Benno, who is about to take his company public and host a major fashion show. Finally fed up with his brother's recklessness and determined to protect his company from bad publicity, he shoots Alvin in the chest and groin, killing him. The SVU team arrives moments later, and Benno feigns grief for his brother and insinuates that Kroger killed him.
Kroger is proven innocent, however, when forensics tests show that Alvin was murdered with his own gun by someone who took it from his office; Kroger could not have stolen it because he had been barred from the show. Surveillance footage of the murder, meanwhile, shows Alvin nodding and smiling at someone just before getting shot, suggesting that he knew and trusted his killer.
Acting on a hunch, Benson brings Benno and Claire to the SVU station house for more questioning and tells the former that they will eventually find the gunpowder residue on his clothes. Benno protests his innocence at first, but his defenses break down after Sergeant Mike Dodds tells him he understands why he did it; Dodds says that he has spent years covering for his own brother, a long-term drug addict, and that his life would be easier without him. Benno begins to confess, but Claire stops him and says that she killed Alvin. Benno tells her to stop talking and insists that he killed Alvin, which creates reasonable doubt as to which one of them is actually guilty. Ultimately, however, Benno pleads guilty to protect Claire and is imprisoned for life.
External links[]
- Benno Gilbert on the Law & Order Wiki
