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Their suspicions aroused when a 12-year-old girl named Melanie (Holliston Coleman) lands in the hospital with complications relating to her pregnancy, SVU detectives Benson (Mariska Hargitay) and Munch (Richard Belzer) end up confronting a charismatic cult leader named Eugene Hoff (Jeff Kober). At any rate, that's what he's calling himself now: it seems that Hoff is a seasoned scam artist who, under a variety of aliases, has exploited gullible religious fanatics for his own crooked purposes. It turns out that Melanie is not only Hoff's wife, she is one of several of his wives--and this is not the most sinister aspect of the case. Series regular Mariska Hargitay earned an Emmy nomination for her perfomance in this harrowing episode.