Child Abuse & Neglect 30 Law & Order: Special Victims Unit episodes
Physical abuse and neglect of children, and the hard work of proving what happened at home.
- Season 1 · Episode 21
Nocturne
A respected neighborhood piano teacher is exposed by his own photographs, and the case rests on a former student whose abuse was taped for years and who has begun to repeat it.
- Season 2 · Episode 4
Legacy
A seven-year-old with a history of hidden injuries lies in a coma while the detectives sort through her father, stepfather, stepbrother and mother.
- Season 2 · Episode 11
Abuse
A celebrity’s son dies chasing the tutor suspected of molesting him, and the investigation turns to his younger sister, whose string of injuries points to a home without attention or care.
- Season 3 · Episode 9
Care
A five-year-old girl in foster care is found beaten to death, and suspicion moves from her birth mother to her foster brother to the women raising them.
- Season 3 · Episode 21
Denial
A rape victim’s grisly keepsake leads detectives to a toddler’s remains hidden in a closet for 14 years, and to a mother and grandmother each hiding a child’s death.
- Season 4 · Episode 16
Tortured
A Tibetan woman who survived torture in her homeland is found strangled with one foot cut off, and the hunt for her killer leads to a shoe fetishist and the mother who beat him.
- Season 5 · Episode 3
Mother
A psychiatrist known for treating sex offenders is attacked and left in a drug den, and the investigation exposes her methods and a patient’s buried past.
- Season 5 · Episode 10
Shaken
A toddler found unconscious near a playground has been violently shaken, and the search for who hurt her moves from a stranger to the nannies and finally to her mother.
- Season 5 · Episode 16
Home
A boy found scavenging for food leads detectives to a homeschooling mother whose fear of the outside world ends with one of her sons shot dead.
- Season 5 · Episode 19
Sick
A 12-year-old’s violent online fantasies lead detectives to a wealthy toy heir who bought his family’s silence, and then to a second accuser whose story is not what it seems.
- Season 5 · Episode 24
Poison
A mother accused of making her adopted daughter swallow detergent is acquitted by a judge whose past rulings Novak sets out to expose.
- Season 6 · Episode 13
Quarry
The remains of a boy missing since 1980 point to a death-row child molester, but the truth lies with a boy he abused.
- Season 7 · Episode 21
Web
A young boy’s abuse leads detectives to his teenage brother’s child pornography website and the paying predators who help him disappear.
- Season 8 · Episode 8
Cage
Two children found handcuffed in a crashed van lead the squad to a careless adoption broker and to foster parents whose coercive “rebirthing” therapy killed a nine-year-old girl.
- Season 10 · Episode 12
Hothouse
The murder of a teenage math prodigy leads the squad from sex traffickers to her abusive father and the pressure cooker of a school for gifted children.
- Season 11 · Episode 23
Wannabe
The rookie officer who catches a serial rapist in Central Park is really a teenager posing as a cop, which puts the whole case at risk.
- Season 12 · Episode 11
Pop
A boy’s death on a carousel exposes a ring of fathers betting on fights between their sons, and Stabler tries to free a teenage fighter from his abusive stepfather.
- Season 12 · Episode 20
Totem
A psychiatrist filling in for Huang convinces Benson and Stabler that a ten-year-old’s rape and murder was committed by a woman, and the trail leads to a family of abused daughters.
- Season 14 · Episode 6
Friending Emily
When a 14-year-old tourist vanishes from a college party and turns up on a live darknet stream, the squad tracks her captor through the girls he took before her.
- Season 14 · Episode 13
Monster's Legacy
An attack on a gymnastics coach leads SVU to a camp director who abused boys for decades, and to one of his victims awaiting execution in Ohio.
- Season 14 · Episode 19
Born Psychopath
A little girl’s injuries lead SVU to her ten-year-old brother, whose lack of empathy alarms the detectives and Dr. Huang as his parents try to protect him.
- Season 17 · Episode 4
Institutional Fail
After a neglected toddler wanders into a precinct, SVU finds his sister starving in a cage and Barba goes after the Child Services caseworker and bosses who faked their home visits.
- Season 18 · Episode 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.
- Season 19 · Episode 10
Pathological
A disabled teenager’s sexual encounter at school leads SVU to discover that her mother has been faking and causing her illnesses for years.
- Season 19 · Episode 20
The Book of Esther
A starved young woman found on a commuter train leads Rollins to a family ruled by an apocalyptic father, and a police siege of their home ends in deaths.
- Season 22 · Episode 2
Ballad of Dwight and Irena
When an abusive boyfriend is electrocuted in his bathtub, his girlfriend’s bullied 14-year-old son confesses, but the squad suspects he is covering for his mother.
- Season 23 · Episode 11
Burning with Rage Forever
After a predator lures an eight-year-old from home through an online game, the boy’s uncle stabs the man and is hailed as a hero until SVU learns what he has hidden.
- Season 24 · Episode 4
The Steps We Cannot Take
A gunman shoots a restaurant owner and his wife and abducts their daughter, and the search uncovers two women held captive for years in a house upstate.
- Season 26 · Episode 18
The Accuser
A welding shop owner is found sexually assaulted with a date carved into his back, and the investigation uncovers his abuse of a teenage apprentice and a girl whose case against him failed two decades earlier.
- Season 26 · Episode 20
Shock Collar
An eight-year-old is taken with her mother’s car during a food delivery, and the squad races to find her after she appears on a website that streams her torture for paying subscribers.
More themes: Crimes
- Blackmail & Extortion
- Child Murders
- Child Sexual Abuse
- Con Artists
- Cults
- Date Rape & Consent
- Domestic Violence
- Gang Rape
- Grooming
- Gun Violence
- Hate Crimes
- Hostage Standoffs
- Human Trafficking
- Incest
- Kidnapping & Abduction
- Male Victims
- Murder for Hire
- Online Predators
- Prison Rape
- Prostitution & Sex Work
- Serial Killers
- Serial Rapists
- Stalking & Voyeurism
- Statutory Rape
- Vigilantes & Revenge
- War Crimes