Human Trafficking 48 Law & Order: Special Victims Unit episodes
People bought, sold or held in servitude, from trafficked children to captive workers.
- Season 2 · Episode 19
Parasites
Bones found under a Manhattan backyard are identified as a Romanian mail-order bride, until dental records reveal the dead woman is her twin and the case leads to a sex-trafficking ring protected by a diplomat.
- Season 4 · Episode 6
Angels
A boy found dead on an airport shuttle bus leads detectives to a ring that smuggles children to pedophiles, and to the brutal murder of the man who held him captive.
- Season 5 · Episode 14
Ritual
A young boy’s mutilated body is found beside the remains of what looks like a religious sacrifice, and the investigation uncovers a trade in children smuggled from Nigeria.
- Season 6 · Episode 2
Debt
Two small children left alone in a Chinatown apartment lead the squad to a mother who owed smugglers for her daughter’s passage, and to the gang that collects such debts.
- Season 6 · Episode 15
Hooked
A teenager found dead with her cousin’s ID turns out to have been selling sex and acting in pornography, and she was HIV positive.
- Season 7 · Episode 3
911
A girl calls 911 from a locked room, and Benson spends the night on the line while a cloned, rerouted phone keeps the squad from finding her.
- Season 8 · Episode 7
Underbelly
A paw-print tattoo on three murdered teenage girls leads Stabler and his new partner, Beck, into an underage prostitution ring and to the pimp who claims to love his girls.
- 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 14
Savior
SVU hunts a religious zealot who strangles prostitutes, and the case depends on a pregnant survivor whose premature baby leaves Benson facing a hard decision.
- Season 11 · Episode 22
Ace
A pregnant rape victim who vanishes from the hospital leads SVU to a Bulgarian ring smuggling women into New York to sell their babies.
- Season 12 · Episode 4
Merchandise
A girl killed fleeing a farmers’ market leads the squad to a ring that buys poor American children, works them on a Long Island farm and sells them for sex.
- Season 13 · Episode 7
Russian Brides
A woman found mutilated beyond recognition leads SVU to a Russian mobster who uses a mail-order bride site to fleece lonely men, and Cragen goes undercover to catch him.
- Season 13 · Episode 10
Spiraling Down
A sting aimed at the men who paid to have sex with a 14-year-old runaway catches a former football star whose head injuries raise the question of whether he understood what he did.
- Season 13 · Episode 23
Rhodium Nights
The death of an underage escort at the police commissioner’s son’s bachelor party draws SVU into a war between two escort bosses with powerful clients.
- Season 14 · Episode 4
Acceptable Loss
A car crash reveals a ring of trafficked girls branded with bar codes, but a federal terrorism investigation orders SVU to leave the traffickers alone.
- Season 14 · Episode 17
Undercover Blue
When a woman says Brian Cassidy raped her years ago while he was undercover, his defense drags Amaro’s own undercover past into court.
- Season 15 · Episode 12
Jersey Breakdown
An underage strip-club waitress is raped by a VIP guest, and her case exposes a New Jersey prosecutor, a judge and a for-profit juvenile prison.
- Season 15 · Episode 14
Wednesday's Child
A mother secretly gives away her troubled adopted son through an online broker, and SVU races to find him before his insulin runs out.
- Season 15 · Episode 24
Spring Awakening
As Amaro faces charges for beating an acquitted suspect, a sting on a robbery-rape ring leads Benson to the mother of the abandoned baby she rescued.
- Season 16 · Episode 1
Girls Disappeared
A teenage witness to the murder of Noah’s mother leads SVU into a Mexican trafficking ring that starts killing anyone who might talk.
- Season 16 · Episode 7
Chicago Crossover
Chicago P.D.’s Voight, Lindsay and Halstead team up with SVU to stop a ring streaming child abuse online, a case tied to Lindsay’s runaway half brother.
- Season 16 · Episode 15
Undercover Mother
SVU teams up with a mother who has spent three years posing as a madam to find her trafficked daughter, and runs into Declan Murphy working undercover in the same trade.
- Season 16 · Episode 23
Surrendering Noah
As sex trafficker Johnny D goes on trial, Benson discloses that he is Noah’s birth father, putting her adoption and the case at risk.
- Season 17 · Episode 17
Manhattan Transfer
A raid on a party where underage girls are trafficked to powerful men leads SVU to two Vice detectives, a nun who infiltrated the ring and a Catholic school tied to Tucker’s family.
- Season 17 · Episode 18
Unholiest Alliance
With Benson removed from SVU and Tucker accused of running a trafficking ring, the squad pursues the clergy behind it after the nun who exposed the ring is murdered.
- Season 18 · Episode 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.
- Season 19 · Episode 21
Guardian
A 16-year-old’s report of a playground gang rape leads SVU to the three teenagers who say they paid her brother and guardian for sex with her.
- Season 19 · Episode 23
Remember Me
A nanny holds a man she says trafficked and raped her at gunpoint in a Central Park West penthouse while a hidden camera streams the ordeal, and Benson becomes her hostage.
- Season 19 · Episode 24
Remember Me Too
Charged after the hostage standoff, Lourdes Vega goes on trial while Benson tries to prove Miguel Lopez trafficked her, and his associates go after Stone’s sister.
- Season 20 · Episode 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.
- Season 20 · Episode 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.
- Season 21 · Episode 7
Counselor, It's Chinatown
A raid on a Chinatown massage parlor uncovers trafficked women working off smuggling debts, and the squad follows the money from the parlor’s manager to its powerful owners.
- Season 21 · Episode 10
Must Be Held Accountable
Enraged that a billionaire who abused his daughter walked free, a retired detective takes Rollins hostage while the squad works to put Getz behind bars.
- Season 21 · Episode 17
Dance Lies & Video Tape
When a ballerina’s secretly filmed sex video turns up on a porn site, SVU uncovers a ballet company where male dancers trade such videos and the leadership uses them to coerce women.
- Season 22 · Episode 16
Wolves in Sheep's Clothing
A single mother in a luxury building’s subsidized apartment is pressured into sex with powerful men, and the trail leads to a celebrated housing advocate.
- Season 23 · Episode 1
And the Empire Strikes Back
SVU builds a sex-trafficking case against a congressman who used a nonprofit’s housing program to prey on homeless mothers and teenage girls.
- Season 23 · Episode 8
Nightmares in Drill City
A teenage girl who helped gunmen into a deadly robbery faces murder charges, and SVU sets out to prove she was a trafficking victim acting out of fear.
- Season 23 · Episode 17
Once Upon a Time in El Barrio
When three girls from Velasco’s old parish in Juárez disappear in New York, SVU tracks a trafficking ring protected by a police captain.
- Season 24 · Episode 1
Gimme Shelter – Part Two
SVU, Organized Crime and Law & Order detectives hunt Mark Sirenko, a trafficker linked to a girl’s murder who has built a large bomb and vanished with it.
- Season 24 · Episode 17
Lime Chaser
SVU uses Muncy’s brother to expose a family ring that drugs women in bars and delivers them to paying men in hotel rooms.
- Season 24 · Episode 19
Bend the Law
Carisi must build a case against his own boss’s husband when 15-year-old girls are found serving members of an exclusive club, while Velasco tracks down an old cartel friend in Maine.
- Season 25 · Episode 5
Zone Rouge
A message on a train ticket revives the search for Maddie Flynn, and Benson teams with an FBI agent to follow her abductor along the railway.
- Season 26 · Episode 10
Master Key
The search for a missing 16-year-old from a group home leads to a dead locksmith, a string of lies and the caseworker who was supposed to protect him.
- Season 27 · Episode 2
A Waiver of Consent
A woman found drugged and dazed in Midtown leads the squad to a members-only sex club whose owner has everyone sign away their right to refuse.
- 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.
- Season 27 · Episode 12
Hubris
Benson rescues a trafficked foster girl and comes to doubt the child-abuse pediatrician whose testimony took her from her father and sent another mother to jail.
- Season 27 · Episode 13
Corrosive
When Carisi’s mentor is shot after a student accuses him of rape online, SVU finds a manipulative father running his son’s dorm room like a cult.
- Season 27 · Episode 17
Deep Under
Former SVU detective Joe Velasco, now undercover for the DEA inside a cartel crew, secretly helps the squad find women being trafficked through New York.
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
- Hate Crimes
- Hostage Standoffs
- 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