Hate Crimes 35 Law & Order: Special Victims Unit episodes
Attacks driven by prejudice, and the prosecutions that put bias itself on trial.
- Season 1 · Episode 11
Bad Blood
When the gay son of an anti-gay activist is beaten to death, a DNA match to a paroled serial rapist points the detectives toward his brother.
- Season 3 · Episode 8
Inheritance
A series of attacks on Asian women leads to the son of a jailed serial rapist, whose lawyer claims his violence is genetic.
- Season 5 · Episode 8
Abomination
The murder of a former poster model for an ex-gay ministry leads detectives through anti-gay activists and academic rivals to a reparative therapist and his closeted son.
- Season 5 · Episode 13
Hate
A Muslim woman is raped and burned alive in Manhattan, and when a second Muslim victim dies the same way, the detectives hunt a killer driven by hatred.
- Season 7 · Episode 20
Fat
Stabler and a hot-headed temporary partner hunt the teens who maimed a schoolgirl, and uncover the beating that started it.
- Season 8 · Episode 17
Sin
The murder of a male escort leads to a famous anti-gay preacher, his devout wife and a family secret that someone in the church was willing to kill to bury.
- Season 9 · Episode 16
Closet
The murder of a gay man exposes his secret marriage to a star quarterback, who is outed, beaten and charged, while a press leak puts Benson under investigation.
- Season 10 · Episode 1
Trials
A foster child’s escape in a stolen van exposes his use in drug trials and leads Benson back to his birth mother’s unsolved rape, part of a pattern targeting single mothers.
- Season 11 · Episode 10
Anchor
Fin tracks a man strangling the American-born children of undocumented immigrants, and a crusading lawyer puts an anti-immigrant TV host on trial in all but name.
- Season 11 · Episode 13
P.C.
SVU hunts the man who raped and killed a lesbian artist while clashing with an abrasive activist who accuses the police of indifference.
- Season 13 · Episode 9
Lost Traveler
When a Romani schoolboy disappears, prejudice inside and outside his community points the investigation at a disabled neighbor while the real killers hide in plain sight.
- Season 13 · Episode 21
Learning Curve
A gang’s attack on Fin’s son’s fiancé and the beating of a teacher accused of abuse lead SVU into a private school where a student’s accusations keep shifting.
- Season 14 · Episode 8
Lessons Learned
A retired teacher’s suicide leads the squad to decades of sexual abuse at an elite boys’ school, and to a board determined to protect the institution.
- Season 14 · Episode 12
Criminal Hatred
A man who targets closeted married men leaves one dead, and Barba tests the hate crime law against a gay defendant who is shielded by his own marriage.
- Season 15 · Episode 8
Military Justice
A Coast Guard ensign found drunk and bleeding in Manhattan says shipmates raped her, but the service charges her instead and protects her commander.
- Season 15 · Episode 16
Gridiron Soldier
A Georgia football recruit lands in jail after attacking a man in a gay bar, and Rollins, who knows his family, suspects his would-be college team did something to him first.
- Season 15 · Episode 18
Criminal Stories
A star newspaper columnist embedded with SVU declares a Muslim woman’s rape report a hoax after her account of an attack in Central Park falls apart.
- Season 17 · Episode 3
Transgender Bridge
When a transgender teenager dies after a 15-year-old boy pushes her off a park footbridge, the DA’s office takes the case from family court and tries him as an adult for a hate crime.
- Season 18 · Episode 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.
- Season 18 · Episode 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.
- Season 18 · Episode 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.
- Season 18 · Episode 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.
- Season 18 · Episode 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.
- Season 19 · Episode 11
Flight Risk
A co-pilot who seized her plane’s cockpit says the captain raped her, and SVU uncovers an airline that bought women’s silence.
- Season 20 · Episode 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.
- Season 20 · Episode 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.
- Season 21 · Episode 3
Down Low in Hell's Kitchen
A closeted pop star says he was assaulted by a serial rapist who targets Black men living on the down low, but his account falls apart as the squad closes in on the real attacker.
- Season 22 · Episode 10
Welcome to the Pedo Motel
When a teenage girl is murdered near a hotel housing sex offenders, suspicion of a parolee coworker spreads to the neighborhood with deadly results.
- Season 22 · Episode 11
Our Words Will Not Be Heard
A white supremacist crew kidnaps the sister of an activist for missing Black women and auctions her fate online, while Benson weighs how to push the NYPD toward reform.
- Season 23 · Episode 10
Silent Night, Hateful Night
SVU joins the Hate Crimes unit to hunt the extremists behind a series of Christmas Eve attacks before their remaining bombs go off.
- Season 23 · Episode 12
Tommy Baker's Hardest Fight
When a mixed martial arts star who meant to come out after his biggest fight is found assaulted, SVU looks past a staged hookup to the people closest to him.
- Season 23 · Episode 15
Promising Young Gentlemen
After a freshman is raped at an exclusive college club, SVU charges every member with conspiracy and Carisi seeks a gender-based hate crime charge.
- Season 24 · Episode 8
A Better Person
A detective’s child is murdered, and the case turns on what her father did to the crime scene to hide that she was living as a woman.
- Season 25 · Episode 8
Third Man Syndrome
Three young men from New Jersey beat a Colombian visitor they take for gay, and the only person who saw them clearly has not left her apartment in years.
- Season 27 · Episode 9
Purity
After a bombing nearly kills Bruno, SVU traces a surrogacy trafficking ring to a white supremacist community and the multimillionaire buying its embryos.
More themes: Crimes
- Blackmail & Extortion
- Child Abuse & Neglect
- Child Murders
- Child Sexual Abuse
- Con Artists
- Cults
- Date Rape & Consent
- Domestic Violence
- Gang Rape
- Grooming
- Gun Violence
- 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