‘Law & Order: SVU’: Benson and Rollins Find Makeshift Brothel in New Preview

This week’s episode of Law & Order: Special Victims Unit is another ripped-from-the-headlines crime, when the SVU team discovers a pop-up brothel. In a preview scene from the episode, Olivia Benson and Amanda Rollins finds the scene of the crime.

The scene starts with a police officer leading Rollins (Kelli Giddish) and Benson (Mariska Hargitay) into a sparse apartment which had its door wide open. Furniture was knocked over, women’s lingerie spread on the floor and the bathroom sink was covered in beauty make-up products.

“At least we know what our vic was running from,” Rollins said.

“What do you mean?” one of the police officers asked.

“First time in a brothel, fellas?” Benson asked as she and Rollins walked out of the apartment.

The new episode also features guest star Jennifer Esposito as Sgt. Phoebe Baker. The former Blue Bloods actress makes her second appearance on the show as an old colleague of Fin’s (Ice-T). Baker offers to help Fin and the SVU team find “The Dollhouse,” a pop-up brothel that moves to different locations around New York City. Baker quickly found an advertisement online and Fin recognized one of the girls in it.

“The internet moved traditional street trade indoors,” Baker said in a clip released earlier this week. “So now we’re just talking more obvious front.”

Although the episode, simply titled “Brothel” does not appear to be based on any specific news event, there have been stories of pop-up brothels appearing in countries around the world. In April 2017, the BBC published the account of an AirBnb apartment owner who discovered his home was being used as a pop-up brothel. In May 2017, a report called “Behind Closed Doors: Organised Sexual Exploitation in England and Wales,” said sexual exploitation of women in the U.K. using pop-up brothels was widespread.

According to World Without Exploitation, there were 965 cases of human trafficking reported to U.S. law enforcement agencies in 2015. Of those, 77 percent of the cases involved commercial sex trafficking.

“Brothel” is a return to a more traditional SVU format after last week’s unconventional “Part 33.” In that episode, a woman murdered her abusive husband and was arrested before the main title started. The rest of the episode found the SVU detectives debating over how they should tell the truth on the stand, and if the woman should spend the rest of her life in jail or not.

New episodes of SVU air on NBC at 10 p.m. ET Thursdays.

Photo credit: Virginia Sherwood/NBC