Law & Order: Special Victims Unit Season 18 Episode Guide
Plot summaries for the eighteenth season of Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, which aired on NBC from September 2016 to May 2017, featuring Lt. Olivia Benson, Det. Amanda Rollins, Det. Fin Tutuola, Det. Sonny Carisi and ADA Rafael Barba.
- 1
Terrorized
A lost boy who pulls a gun on Benson leads SVU to a planned shooting in Central Park, and his mother, charged with murder, says the attackers raped her for years.
- 2
Making a Rapist
A man freed after 16 years by a retested rape kit becomes the prime suspect when the daughter of the woman who misidentified him is raped and killed.
- 3
Imposter
A security guard who poses as a college admissions director to seduce anxious mothers is charged with rape, testing whether sex obtained by fraud is a crime in New York.
- 4
Heightened Emotions
An Olympic-hopeful pole vaulter who secretly works as an escort accuses a client of rape, while Rollins takes in her newly paroled sister.
- 5
Rape Interrupted
Benson’s first partner pressures her to drop the case against his son, who was found on top of an unconscious woman in a park.
- 6
Broken Rhymes
The rape of a transgender art student in a mall restroom leads SVU to a record label and a hardcore rapper hiding his love for her.
- 7
Next Chapter
A woman raped in her apartment blames the man who once stalked her, but the evidence against him was planted by the retired sergeant who rescued her years before.
- 8
Chasing Theo
A six-year-old disappears from his bed during his mother’s late-night party, and the hunt runs through her ex-wife, her violent ex-boyfriend and finally the nanny who raised him.
- 9
Decline & Fall
A bartender who remembers nothing after a retail billionaire’s birthday party learns that two generations of his family had sex with her, and the patriarch claims he is too impaired to stand trial.
- 10
Motherly Love
A teenager kills his best friend to stop what his psychiatrist mother calls a rape, until SVU learns she was the one abusing the boy.
- 11
Great Expectations
A 13-year-old hockey player is sexually assaulted with a stick after a loss, and the case leads to his best friend and the father who drives him.
- 12
No Surrender
An Army Ranger chosen as the face of a recruiting tour is beaten and raped after a night of underground fighting, and the man she identifies has an alibi.
- 13
Genes
A rapist who claims a “rape gene” leads SVU to a therapy group where a serial attacker has confessed, and the law may protect what was said there.
- 14
Net Worth
A junior investment banker accuses her firm’s billionaire client of rape, and his allies use emails, tabloid photos and a lucrative job offer to make the case go away.
- 15
Know It All
A data-mining executive suspected of disguising his girlfriend’s murder as a serial killer’s work uses hacked secrets to blackmail a forensic expert and Barba.
- 16
The Newsroom
A news anchor accuses her network’s powerful chief of rape on live television, and SVU struggles to find colleagues willing to risk their jobs to back her.
- 17
Real Fake News
A conspiracy website’s false story about a congressman and a child sex ring endangers a restaurant and SVU’s own families, but the frame behind it leads to a real trafficking operation.
- 18
Spellbound
A publicist says a celebrity healer raped her at his ayahuasca retreat although she took no drugs, and SVU sets out to prove he hypnotized her.
- 19
Conversion
A young woman on a church trip is raped by a friend who says he did it to cure her of being gay, and the case leads SVU to the pastor who taught him.
- 20
American Dream
SVU hunts the masked men who raped two Muslim sisters and killed one of them and their father, but the only eyewitness is deported before he can testify.
- 21
Sanctuary
With their key witness deported, SVU pressures a suspect’s undocumented wife to break his alibi, and Benson must decide whether to back a grieving mother’s changed account at trial.