SVU investigates a 16-year-old named Karen Raye's claims that she was raped on a street corner, which leads to a ring of chat room pedophiles. The main focus is on the pedophile Harry Waters and their attempts to catch him.
- Answer Cut: Munch asks "What do a bunch of child molesters talk about anyway?" The screen cuts to a new title card with the usual CHUNG-CHUNG noise and fades in on the various men talking about their conquests, fantasies, and fetishes.
- Berserk Button: Stabler has it up to here multiple times throughout the episode as the pedophiles try to justify their sexual appetites, but he especially loses it on Keith for trying to downplay his role in the whole operation.
- Big Brother Is Watching: The entire motif of the episode as they talk about the potential crimes that can happen through internet chat rooms.
- Child Abuse Is a Special Kind of Evil: None of the pedophiles in the episode are played as anything but irredeemable villainous scumbags.
- Crying Wolf: The episode starts off with Karen falsely telling her mother and the detectives she was raped.
- Disappeared Dad: Elaine's father left when she was eight, leaving her with issues that caused her to see Harry as a substitute father figure.
- Exact Words: Doris says she and the other old women advertise the used panties as being from "homecoming queens." While this does imply they come from her granddaughter Elaine, it also is technically true as Doris and her friends possibly could have been homecoming queens about fifty years ago.
- False Rape Accusation: Karen Raye falsely accused Keith Vaneshun of raping her, only because of her fear of her incredibly strict mother finding out that she had sex with anyone, let alone Keith. Zig-zagged in that while it was consensual, it turns out to be statutory rape since Karen is 16 and Keith is 21.
- Freudian Excuse: Karen's mother got pregnant at age sixteen and she's determined not to let her go through the same thing.
- Friend to All Children: The pedophile the detectives interview at the end of the episode claims to be this, making the Insane Troll Logic statement that children actually love being molested by him because they don't get enough love at home, and that the police are the truly mean ones by making them recount their trauma. He tells them the children leave the police in tears while when they leave him they're smiling.
- Horrible Judge of Character: Harry, for all his grandstanding about being able to tell who they are via Sherlock Scan, is actually pretty terrible at telling who his fellow pedophiles are out in the wild. More than half of those at the meeting he sets up for them end up being undercover FBI or police officers!
- Insistent Terminology: Harry insists he and others are not pedophiles but "child lovers."
- The Jailbait Wait: Stabler is surprisingly lenient with Keith the first go-around, telling him to wait a couple of years and then try dating Karen again. That is until he discovers child porn on the man's computer...
- Leonine Contract: The detectives agree to reduce Harry's sentence if and only the his fellow pedophiles he'll introduce them to are convicted.
- Locked Out of the Loop: Cragen is not amused that the sting operation turned out to mostly be a bust because the FBI didn't bother to inform the NYC police that half the men in the group were their undercover agents.
- May–December Romance: Mentioned in the episode almost by name as one of the chatrooms Harry likes to visit is "May/December Love."
- Meaningful Name: Harry's online alias is "The Yachtsman", to project a air of a suave, intelligent, wealthy man who can give the girls he solicits whatever they want.
- My Beloved Smother: Karen's mother is extremely overprotective of her, to the point where her daughter would rather make up a false rape accusation than admit she had consensual sex.
- My God, What Have I Done?: Karen falls into this when she realizes her lie of being raped has caused more trouble than she intended, especially for her 21-year old boyfriend.
- New Media Are Evil: Discussed throughout the episode regarding online pedophiles and their ability to hide through anonymous names.
- '90s Hair: Karen's boyfriend Keith has the shaggy curtains style and Elaine, Harry's victim, has a messy top-do with face-framing bangs.
- Older Than They Look: Munch and Jeffries initially mistake Elaine's grandmother for her mother.
- Parental Incest: Karen's mother behavior has shades of this, given she makes her sixteen year old daughter undress in front of her every day when she gets home and even sniffs her hair.
- Harry shows signs of invoking this as a fantasy, as the victim he first befriends is by acting like a father figure for her and saying he lost a daughter her age in a car carash.
- Pædo Hunt: The plot of the episode. It would be the first but not last time SVU did this.
- Power of Trust: Stabler promises his daughter Maureen towards the end of the episode he won't read her e-mail anymore. He admits he never distrusted her to begin with, he was just worried about what might be coming into her inbox.
- Punch-Clock Villain: Harry's lawyer. It's clear she finds his behavior repugnant but she's also not going to do less than her best to defend him and get him a deal.
- Shout-Out: It's discussed that Harry likes to visit music websites young teens like featuring Britney Spears, Backstreet Boys, and 98 Degrees
. Munch says that Pamela Anderson is the most searched term on the internet, which was true at the time of filming. Benson mentions talking about Western Animation/Pocahontas when Harry says talking with a fellow grown man about G-rated movies as being a gateway to learning if he's a pedophile or not. Munch mentions the Mashantucket Pequot Tribe casino when talking to the old ladies running the "used panties" account on Ebay with Doris replying that like the Beardstown Ladies club, they too found a way to make money in their old age. - Suddenly Shouting: Stabler's very appropriate response to Keith Vaneshun saying that the underage kids in child porn photos were "just pictures, man."Stabler: (slamming his fist on the table) THEY'RE NOT JUST PICTURES!
- Undercover Cop Reveal: At the end of the episode, the SVU team busts the pedophile ring....only to discover they only have four actual pedos on their hands, with the rest being undercover FBI agents.
- You No Take Candle: One of Harry's coworkers said the twelve-year old sex worker they found in his room in Cuba talked like this, asking them "You want good time too?" when they walked in.
- What the Hell, Hero?: Maureen calls her dad out on reading her e-mail and how it's a huge invasion of her privacy.
- When the head of the FBI sting operation yells at Cragen for ruining their sting operation, Cragen yells right back at him for the fact they set up a sting operation in NYC without even telling SVU what they were doing. He points out if they had worked together, they could have avoided the whole fallout that resulted in so few actual predators being nabbed.
