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Recap / Law & Order: Special Victims Unit S22E10 "Welcome to the Pedo Motel"

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After a teenage girl is found murdered near a halfway house for sex offenders, the Special Victims Unit initially suspects her co-worker Lonnie Liston, a parolee living in the house. However, vigilantes take the law into their own hands and lynch Lonnie, unbeknownst to them that Lonnie was set up by someone else. Meanwhile, Rollins' father suffers a heart attack.

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  • Bittersweet Ending: Roy Eastman is arrested for facilitating both Lonnie and Ceranda's murders. Carisis vows to have him punished to the fullest extent of the law. The episode ends at Lonnie and Ceranda's joint memorial service, with both families mourning the senseless deaths caused by a hateful bigot.
  • The Bus Came Back: This is Sgt. Khaldun's first appearance in the show since "Dance, Lies, and Videotape".
  • Chubby Chaser: One of the people in the Motel, Frank, is into plus-sized women like his late Aunt Rose with a bit of Incest Subtext.
  • Corrupt Cop: Roy Eastman, a parole officer who didn't like that Lonnie was hooking up with his white step-daughter McKenna, has him sent to jail for statutory rape. After Lonnie does his time and starts seeing McKenna again and the two make plans to run away when she turns 17, Roy gets another one of his parolees, Antonio Johnson, to rape Ceranda while wearing the same school jacket as Lonnie to get him send him back to prison. Antonio's half-brother, Sam, ends up doing it to protect him, but ends up killing Ceranda when she resists. Nonetheless, the murder riles up the neighborhood, especially the vigilante biker group the Dyckman Knights, against the Pedo Hotel and its residents. When Roy gets impatient over the SVU not arresting and charging Lonnie as fast as he had hoped for, he decides to dispose of Lonnie altogether by tipping off another biker gang who idolizes the Dyckman Knights, lying that Lonnie is the killer and goading them into taking the law into their own hands. The gang subsequently lays siege to the hotel, injuring most of the residents and lynching Lonnie by burning him alive. When he is ultimately arrested in the end, Roy tries to justify that he was trying to protect his step-daughter and cockily believes he won't be convicted.
  • It Never Gets Any Easier: Benson says this after they find Ceranda's body.
  • Torches and Pitchforks: The Dyckman Knights are a biker gang that are a far-right wing version of this.
  • Where da White Women At?: It was this, plus his girlfriend being underage (albeit barely, as he had literally just turned 18 on the night they hooked up) and from an upper-class neighborhood that gets Lonnie put on the Sex Offender registry and to be a "guest" at the Pedo Motel on the surface.

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