Crimes Against Children 33 Law & Order episodes
Cases of abuse, neglect and the deaths of children, and the families and agencies around them.
- Season 1 · Episode 9
Indifference
A little girl who can’t be woken at school becomes the center of a case about a family where drugs and violence went unchecked for years.
- Season 1 · Episode 19
The Serpent's Tooth
When a businessman and his wife are murdered in their home, everything points to the sons who stand to inherit.
- Season 2 · Episode 5
God Bless the Child
A little girl dies of a treatable infection because her parents’ church forbids doctors, and prosecutors must decide whether faith is a defense.
- Season 2 · Episode 7
In Memory Of
Workers renovating a brownstone find a child’s skeleton, and a 30-year-old missing-person case comes back to life.
- Season 2 · Episode 18
Cradle to Grave
A baby left in a box on an emergency-room floor turns out to have frozen to death at home.
- Season 4 · Episode 1
Sweeps
A molestation victim’s father shoots the abuser on a live talk show, and the detectives suspect the host steered him there for ratings.
- Season 4 · Episode 9
Born Bad
A 13-year-old foster child is kicked to death on a Manhattan street, and the 14-year-old charged with killing him mounts a defense claiming he was genetically born to be violent.
- Season 4 · Episode 20
Nurture
A missing foster child turns up hidden in a basement room, and the woman who took her insists she was rescuing the girl.
- Season 5 · Episode 7
Precious
A reported baby kidnapping turns into a murder case against a mother whose earlier infants also died suddenly.
- Season 5 · Episode 18
Privileged
The stabbing of a couple in their brownstone leads to a young alcoholic whose foster family once lived in the house.
- Season 6 · Episode 8
Angel
Leah Coleman reports that her eight-month-old daughter was taken from her carriage while she was at confession, but a walk back through her morning with Curtis ends in a confession of a different kind.
- Season 6 · Episode 14
Custody
The killing of a corrupt social worker leads to a birth mother who took her son from his white adoptive family, and former ADA Paul Robinette defends her by putting the system on trial.
- Season 6 · Episode 19
Slave
A woman is killed in her bed by a stray bullet fired from a nearby rooftop, and the shooter turns out to be a 13-year-old boy working for a crack dealer.
- Season 6 · Episode 22
Homesick
A five-month-old dies of nicotine poisoning after a jar of strained plums, and suspicion falls on his unhappy English au pair.
- Season 8 · Episode 2
Denial
Blood in a cheap hotel room leads to two college sweethearts who deny their newborn son ever lived, until his body is found in the middle of their trial.
- Season 8 · Episode 6
Baby, It's You
A 14-year-old fashion model dies of an infection caused by an untreated rape, and her wealthy parents’ combative lawyer fights the police while the case reaches back to Baltimore.
- Season 8 · Episode 10
Ritual
An Egyptian importer’s killing first looks like terrorism, then reveals a family plan to have his 11-year-old grandniece cut by a doctor flown in from Cairo, and her father is the killer.
- Season 9 · Episode 1
Cherished
A little girl dies days after her adoption, her troubled older brother is arrested, and new ADA Abbie Carmichael follows the case back to the couple and the Russian doctor who passed along a dying child.
- Season 9 · Episode 15
Disciple
A teenage girl dies of internal injuries after being left in a hospital waiting room, and the trail leads to a homemade exorcism run by a former nun who says she hears the voice of Saint Michael.
- Season 10 · Episode 12
Mother's Milk
Blood in an abandoned apartment leads to an infant who starved to death, and Carmichael chooses to try his young mother while the father takes a deal.
- Season 12 · Episode 16
Born Again
An adopted girl with severe behavioral problems dies during an unlicensed rebirthing session, and McCoy must sort out how much blame belongs to the therapist and how much to the mother who brought her there.
- Season 13 · Episode 22
Sheltered
A sniper terrorizes Lower Manhattan with daylight shootings from the rooftops, and the hunt leads to an ex-Marine marksman and the teenage boy he has raised as his son.
- Season 13 · Episode 24
Smoke
A popular comedian’s adopted baby falls to his death from a burning hotel suite, and the investigation uncovers a child sex abuse case the star paid to keep quiet.
- Season 15 · Episode 11
Fixed
Fifteen years after he was locked up for abusing his family and causing his young daughter’s death, Jacob Lowenstein is run down a month into his parole, and the evidence points to the prison therapist who knew him best.
- Season 15 · Episode 19
Sects
A survivor of a sect that abused its children kills his former nanny and then shoots himself, and McCoy turns the case against the mother who founded the group.
- Season 16 · Episode 16
Cost of Capital
A junior investment banker’s body is dumped far from where he died, the trail leads to the boss he was secretly sleeping with, and the murder case ends up depending on what her teenage daughter overheard on a late-night call.
- Season 16 · Episode 19
Positive
A 14-year-old’s attack on a hospital official leads detectives to his little sister’s death from AIDS and to the doctor who secretly gave her an experimental vaccine meant only for animals.
- Season 17 · Episode 5
Public Service Homicide
A man caught in a tabloid TV sting meeting a supposed 12-year-old is stabbed to death the night his segment airs, and the case exposes a reality-show producer who sent his killer to his door.
- Season 17 · Episode 12
Charity Case
A producer is shot dead outside an ice cream parlor as he holds the baby he and his actress wife adopted from Africa, and the case uncovers what became of the real child.
- Season 17 · Episode 20
Captive
The kidnapping and murder of a young boy lead to a man who abducted another boy five years earlier, and the prosecutors come to doubt which of the two did the killing.
- Season 17 · Episode 22
The Family Hour
The beating death of a former senator’s ex-wife exposes years of abuse in his family, and then the senator kills his daughter and claims self-defense.
- Season 18 · Episode 11
Betrayal
When a psychiatrist who treats troubled teenagers is shot dead in his office, the evidence leads to his wife, who was his patient at 15, and she takes over her own defense to put his abuse on trial.
- Season 19 · Episode 8
Chattel
The murder of a married pair of divorce lawyers leads the detectives to a Haitian adoptee sent back home after a divorce, and then to a couple who brought Haitian children to New York to work as servants.