The Church of Wisdom and Sight was a religiously-crooked fanatic cult led by career con-artist Abraham Ophion (also known by his real name Eugene Hoff). They are an antagonistic group in the episode "Charisma" of Law & Order: Special Victims Unit (also known as Law & Order: SVU). Their main counpounnd is a brownstone located at 104 West 120th Street in New York City, New York.
History
This so-called "church" was based on the beliefs of Abraham Ophion back when he (as Eugene Hoff) was signed for Bible study at the Pentecostal church known as Christian Tabernacle of Grace in New York for a couple months before he fooled the church's Reverend Tucker into making him director of faith ministries in the church. Hoff's discussion groups had nearly 100 members and he was very well liked. But the more popular he gets, the more bizarre he becomes as he strays from the beliefs of mainstream Christianity and even preached that The Serpent was Christ (explaining the tattoo of a reddish-brown serpent on his right arm to symbolize and support his so-called claim). Since after realizing Hoff's stay in the Christian Tabernacle of Grace was a mistake, Rev. Tucker fired him, but 10 local families left the church as a result of this.
The newly founded Church of Wisdom and Sight comprised of the same 10 families under Hoff's influence made a drastic change, when Eugene Hoff, now calling himself Abraham, became paranoid. He kept telling his followers that they were going to be punished for their beliefs and that their government plotted to murder them all and they had to be ready to defend themselves by all means necessary including collecting weapons, trips to the firing range, and storing food. He started separating the married couples, because he said that they could never be soldiers of God if they were slaves to the flesh. Eventually he managed to send most of the men away, and used his female followers as slaves. He also spoke of the purity and goodness of children. But he only paid attention to the girls.
Followers Carl and Simone Buchman withdrew the cult in the dead of the night, after Carl caught Abraham, stripped down to his shorts, with their daughter Janie when she was only 4.
John Cramer from Englewood, New Jersey, joined Abraham's church group with his wife Cindy, and their daughter Melanie. His parents reported them missing to Detective Steward "Stu" MacKenzie of the Englewood police department, but they could not find anything useful. Abraham soon shot follower John Cramer through the head, and stashed him inside a wall of his house. He then deceptively told Cindy that her husband had left her for another woman. He received a noise citation from the police for doing construction in the middle of the night. Abraham later impregnated both Cindy and Melanie.
After the subsequent arrest of the 7 female adult members of the cult at the Safer Nation gun shop while they were mediating together in a praying fashion, John Cramer's skeletal remains was finally found after ten long years, during a recent and ongoing investigation by Special Victims Unit into the deaths of 7 children; six of which turned out to be related to Abraham including Melanie's 9 year-old maternal half-brother Samuel.
Abraham Ophion was shot in the back and killed by Melanie Cramer because of his boasting lie that he was greater then God. This was the end of his cult.