Law & Order: Special Victims Unit Season 20 Episode Guide
Plot summaries for the twentieth season of Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, which aired on NBC from September 2018 to May 2019, featuring Lt. Olivia Benson, Det. Amanda Rollins, Sgt. Fin Tutuola, Det. Sonny Carisi and ADA Peter Stone.
- 1
Man Up
A 15-year-old boy refuses to name the man who raped him after a family hunting trip, and the squad comes to suspect his own father.
- 2
Man Down
After his father is acquitted of raping him, a teenager opens fire at his school, and Stone sets out to hold the father responsible.
- 3
Zero Tolerance
A nine-year-old Guatemalan girl separated from her mother by border agents turns up in a New York sex trafficker’s apartment, and Benson goes after the federal officer who separated them.
- 4
Revenge
A string of home-invasion rapes by a fake pizza deliveryman leads the squad into an online community of men who blame women for their loneliness.
- 5
Accredo
An Accredo member is found raped and murdered in a SoHo loft, and the trail leads from her abusive ex to the self-help group’s charismatic male leader.
- 6
Exile
A woman found beaten and assaulted in an alley turns out to be a missing college student living on the street with no memory of who she was.
- 7
Caretaker
A father and his two children are stabbed in their beds, and suspicion moves from the family’s devoted nanny to the children’s mother.
- 8
Hell's Kitchen
A waitress who refuses to call her assault rape leads SVU to her celebrity chef boss, his uncharged Brooklyn cases and the prosecutor who passed on them.
- 9
Mea Culpa
Stone is accused of a rape from his baseball days and asks SVU to investigate him, splitting the squad until the truth about that night emerges.
- 10
Alta Kockers
The murder of a teenage memoirist exposes a literary hoax and leads SVU to two reclusive elderly brothers, their mother’s frozen body and a decades-old secret.
- 11
Plastic
A young woman’s rape complaint against a celebrity plastic surgeon and his girlfriend leads SVU to a teenager who disappeared 14 years earlier and a body hidden in a wall.
- 12
Dear Ben
A copycat revives the case of a 1980s serial rapist who taunted Stone’s father, and the search for the real attacker leads to a genealogy website.
- 13
A Story of More Woe
A teenager confesses to killing her father to protect her younger sister from abuse, but the story points SVU toward the helpful neighbor who has taken the girls in.
- 14
Part 33
As the squad waits to testify in the trial of a woman who killed her emotionally abusive police officer husband, the detectives argue over how far their testimony should help her.
- 15
Brothel
The death of a sex worker who fled a pop-up brothel leads Fin and a Vice sergeant from his past to corrupt cops and a judge who supplied the women.
- 16
Facing Demons
A young man’s suicide leads SVU to the magic-shop clerk who abused him as a boy and who once coached Brian Cassidy in youth baseball.
- 17
Missing
A six-year-old found in the trunk of a stolen car leads SVU to her kidnapper and to a boy who vanished from a Queens park in 2002.
- 18
Blackout
After a police gala ends with defense attorney Nikki Staines drugged and raped, SVU’s inquiry leads to a well-connected lawyer with leverage over a judge and the department.
- 19
Dearly Beloved
A woman accuses a therapist of rape at his own wedding, but her history of harassing him and others makes SVU doubt her story.
- 20
The Good Girl
A pregnant 13-year-old names her drama teacher as the father, but after her stepfather kills him, SVU learns the stepfather legally married her in Missouri.
- 21
Exchange
An exchange student’s rape by a cabdriver leads the squad to discover that her host father groomed her and her sister into believing their own father had abused them.
- 22
Diss
When a pop star is beaten in her home, suspicion falls on her rapper husband, Fin’s childhood friend, and the trail leads back to an old Harlem killing.
- 23
Assumptions
When a Muslim councilwoman is raped in a synagogue, early assumptions point to Jewish teens, but her secret life leads the squad to her ex-husband.
- 24
End Game
When a teenage girl’s body falls into the Hudson, Benson ties the death to Rob Miller, and Stone bends the rules to put him away.