Written By Dawn De Noon and Lisa Marie Petersen
Directed By Gloria Muzio
When 5-year-old foster child Cassie Adams is found murdered, the investigation leads SVU to her older foster brother, Glenn, who is considered a suspect in her death.
But after Cassie's biological mother kidnaps her other daughters from their foster home, it is later revealed that Cassie's foster grandmother & mother were responsible for her death with Glenn as the witness.
Tropes
- Abusive Parents: Dorothy Rudd ordered her daughter (who was also abused by Dorothy when she was a child) to discipline foster children through tying the children up, and she herself caned them, among other abuses.
- Big Brother Instinct: Glenn loves being a big brother, even if it's only to his adoptive siblings.
- Bittersweet Ending: Dorothy dies of a heart attack before she can be convicted of her crimes, and Glenn gets shuffled off to another foster home. However, Alex ensures that Tashandra Adams gets her other children back by threatening the social worker who removed them with criminal charges for Cassie's death.
- Commonality Connection: Invoked by Cragen, who plays through Glenn's favorite game in order to better connect with him and get insight into his home situation.
- Diabolus ex Machina: Dorothy dies of a heart attack in jail while on trial for murdering Cassie.
- Evil Cripple: Dorothy. She beat a five-year-old to death with her cane and dies peacefully and quietly of a heart attack that caused her no suffering.
- Friend to All Children: Danny Marston, one of the construction workers who befriended Glenn and his foster siblings is this and is first shown playing basketball with a group of children. Averted with Jane Rudd, Dorothy's daughter, who never wanted kids and only fostered them due to her mother's wishes.
- Hidden Depths: Cragen turns out to be really good at video games. Huang even quips, "Your Captain has found his calling."
- I Want Grandkids: A particularly dark variation. Jane Rudd never wanted children, but Dorothy wanted to be a grandmother, so Jane became a foster mother just to get her own mother off her back, ending in a little girl's death.
- Locked Out of the Loop: When Munch and Finn go to interview Cassie's biological mother, they realize that children's services never informed her of Cassie's death, and are somberly forced to do so themselves.
- Not Afraid of You Anymore: At Dorothy's trial, she tries to intimidate Glenn by glowering at him while he's on the witness stand. When Alex stands in front of him so he can't see her, she loudly drops her cane in a final attempt to scare him into submission. Instead, he loudly denounces her for murdering Cassie.
