Tear Jerker / Law & Order: Special Victims Unit

In the criminal justice system, there are crimes and cases that truly test the emotional integrity of all that bare witness; the victims, the witnesses, the investigators, and the prosecution. These are some examples.

DUN-DUN!

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All spoilers are unmarked. You Have Been Warned

Per Season

Seasons 1- 5

• The victim in "A Single Life" (1.02), Susan Travis, dies by a self-inflicted fall. Before her death, she had changed her name to Gretchen Quinn to get away from her father, who had molested her and her sister when they were younger. Susan's sister, Ellen, confronts their father to prevent his newest daughter from being another victim. She reads to their horrific father a letter from her late sister, ripping him to shreds and ultimately breaking down. Listening to her is painful not just for the audience, but also In-Universe. Even Benson is shaken up by it, which makes sense considering her own horrible parents.
  Ellen: Her father! Who took away her childhood, her virginity, her self of fairness in the world! Cause of death was from a fall, self-inflicted! She was 32...(she then trails off and begins sobbing)
• It's hard not to have some sympathy for the main suspect in "Uncivilized" (1.07), Bill Turbit. Yes, what he did to a child was horrible (he raped and used a belt to choke a Boy Scout who came to his door selling cookies), but apparently he was suffering from a psychotic break at the time due to an STP drug cocktail and doesn't even remember what happened. The cops found him screaming and lying on the floor in the fetal position after the crime. He served his time and then went clean, found faith, and tried to live a quiet life while on parole. After a little boy in his neighborhood winds up raped and murdered, however, his status as a sex offender is revealed and he is harassed by police and neighbors alike, with the one person who could alibi him lying about where he'd been. The city also wants to use him as a test case for a bill that would attempt to keep sex offenders locked up permanently. Eventually, he's exonerated but winds up shot dead by the victim's father anyway. In the end, it was two teenagers who wanted to frame Turbit after finding him on the sex offender registry online. They only meant to kidnap the boy, but the sociopathic tendencies of one teen lead to him being raped and murdered. For all we know, Turbit hadn't done anything (more) wrong, but both he and an innocent child are dead because a couple of teenagers wanted to punish him for something he'd already gone to jail for.
  Cragen: Well, like you said, counselor, I only catch 'em, but last I heard the rule of law was 'you do the crime, you do the time', and Mr. Turbit did his. Why don't I just release him with a giant 'M' on his back?
• "Honor" (2.02): A young daughter of an Afghan diplomat is violently injured and later dies as a result of an honor killing. Despite living in America, her father was a strict believer in Sharia law and was enraged that she was going to school to be a journalist, working, and was in love with a fellow Afghan immigrant. The honor killing was carried out by her brother after he and their father discovered that she had accepted her boyfriend's marriage proposal and lost her virginity to him. If it wasn't tragic enough, it turns out that her brother has mixed feelings and multiple personalities as a result of their upbringing. He has been suffering nightmares and flashbacks for years as a result of watching his grandfather slit his aunt's throat after her husband alleged she had been unfaithful. The mother, who no longer cares about herself after losing her daughter, testifies about how her husband forced her son to murder his sister after her husband was the first one to stab her. It ends up being All for Nothing; the son is still convicted, and Benson and Stabler go to the family's apartment only to discover the mother's body, her husband having killed her before fleeing back to his homeland.
• The ending of the episode "Legacy" (2.04). The story revolves around an abused little girl who has fallen into a coma. Munch eventually found out that her mother did it. The case hits particularly close to home for Munch because, as he explains to Olivia, when he was a kid, there was a little girl in his neighborhood who was abused by her mother. Munch didn't pay much attention to her until the girl's mother killed her by throwing her through a window. Munch went to her funeral and saw the girl's father in tears, the first time he ever saw a grown man cry. At the end of the episode, Munch visits the victim's hospital room with a copy of the Dr. Seuss book Oh, the Places You'll Go that he found in her bedroom. He reads a passage from it and the screen fades to black. It's just... heart-wrenching.
• In "Baby Killer" (2.05) the detectives are forced to arrest a 7-year-old Hispanic boy for murder after he shoots and kills a 6-year-old classmate at school. The detectives, but especially Alex, struggle with the slippery slope of charging a child with a capital crime. Alex's superiors see the case as both a meal ticket and a chance to show that they are serious about stopping child-on-child violence. Unfortunately, Alex doesn't see it that way; especially when evidence surfaces that the kid was exposed to gang violence and and witnessed a murder committed with the gun he used. Then she learns that he was trying to protect himself, shooting at the gang member who had committed the murder because he (correctly) thought the man would kill him as a witness, and he hit the little girl by mistake. Upon being asked what he thought his punishment should be, the little boy drew himself surrounded by pink swirls and told his shrink that he was scared God was going to make him burn in Hell for killing his friend. In the end, Alex decides to follow her gut, and the child isn't charged. The girl's mother accepts this and tells angry protesters to go home to their own kids and stop similar situations from happening.
  • Just when everything seems like it is going to work out alright, the squad gets a call just as they are about to go out and celebrate. After he was shunned by a group of children for being a killer, the 7-year-old was ambushed and shot to death in the street on his way home. By a 12-YEAR-OLD FROM HIS SCHOOL. The killer says that it was justice because "You can't kill a sister and just walk." A numb Benson remarks "The cycle never stops, does it?" to a stunned Elliot, who replies "Welcome to the Gaza Strip" as the screen fades to black.
• The ending of "Manhunt" (2.18). A happy tearjerker, but a tearjerker nonetheless.
  Munch: I just wanted to tell you. You can turn your lights out tonight.
• The ending of the episode "Parasites" (2.19), involving a Romanian immigrant who assumed the identity of her murdered twin sister: "Irina can rest in peace now."
• In "Pique" (2.20), Benson finds out that the Villain of the Week's mother has been molesting him since age six. When Stabler relays this information and tries to get him to talk about it, the perp denies it at first but eventually breaks down and tearfully repeats the words his mother said to him when she first initiated the abuse.
• In the episode "Repression" (3.01) a father is accused of molesting his daughter. Turns out he never molested her; a quack therapist did some nonsense hypnosis and made her believe she was molested instead of actually helping her. This leads to his life being ruined before one of his other daughters accidentally kills him during a confrontation. The therapist is arrested, but it's too late. She's brainwashed one girl into thinking she was molested, one sister has a criminal record and has to live with murdering her father, and the mother is a widow and left with two traumatized daughters. Great job, therapist!
• In "Stolen" (3.03), the situation of the Blake family when it's discovered that son Tyler is missing child Stephen Talmadge, who was kidnapped from his home after his mother Jennifer was murdered and handed over with forged papers to the adoption broker his adoptive parents used. Tyler's birth father Robert Cook, who had a college fling with Jennifer and was unaware he was the father, sues for custody and ends up winning, devastating all 3 Blakes. Though it's mitigated by the implication Robert will keep the Blakes involved in Tyler's life.
  • Jennifer's killer turns out to be Robert's ex-wife Linda, and while the episode doesn't dwell on it, Tyler's two half-brothers through Robert will have to deal with their mother going to prison for most likely the rest of her life.
• Darrell Guan's backstory in "Inheritance" (3.08) is soul-crushing, even though he's a vile person. He was a Child by Rape born when a black man raped his Chinese mother, and he was raised by her in Chinatown. His own grandparents called him a "black devil," and the Chinese children would bully him so badly that every day he would beg his mother not to make him leave the apartment. His mother is the only one who loves him, trying to protest that he's a good boy...but when questioned by the detectives, she admits that when he was a child, even she hated him a little, too.
• "Ridicule" (3.10): A male stripper is raped by a group of women, and most of the legal authorities he goes to refuse to take his report seriously. Even most of the guys of the SVU don't believe him because he had gotten an erection during his rape, which is as horrible as saying a woman wasn't really raped because she became wet during it. The ringleader of the rapists gets away scot-free while leaving her friend to be declared guilty of the rape charges instead of her. Luckily, she's arrested for the murder of her other friend, who wanted to inform her husband of the group's actions so she could hopefully be declared guilty over that. This Double Standard Rape: Female on Male episode will most likely hit the sore spots of those who have experienced unwanted sexual advances but were considered to be overreacting or thought to be at fault for a variety of reasons such as occupation, gender, etc.
• "Guilt" (3.18), after Alex pulls a Screw the Rules, I'm Doing What's Right!.
  Elizabeth: Of course. You did it for the greater good. The safety of society. Bull. You did this for you.
  Alex: I did this for hundreds of Barnett's future victims.
  Elizabeth: One. One victim. Sam Cavanaugh. Did it work? Did it assuage your guilt?
  Alex: ...no. I don't think that's gonna happen anytime soon.
  Elizabeth: I got news for you—it won't happen. Ever.

• "Angels" (4.06): Little Ernesto was abducted from Central America and brought to the US under the pretense of going to a fancy school. Instead, he was sold as a sex slave to a violent pedophile who then passed Ernesto around to his buddies. When another, younger boy was brought in, Ernesto befriended him and they ran away together, only for the younger boy to end up dying from carbon monoxide poisoning during the escape, for which Ernesto blames himself. The only light at the end of the tunnel is that SVU is able to track down his parents and he finally gets to go home.
• "Waste" (4.08): a billionaire suffering from a chronic health condition pays a doctor to impregnate a coma victim with his sperm in order to provide stem cells that could help cure him. But on the stand, he actually starts to win over the jury (and the viewers?) as he describes the living hell he endures every day and that stem cells are his only hope of relief. Then he turns to the girl's parents with tears in his eyes and tells them:
  "I understand how you must feel. I'm a father myself. But your beautiful daughter died YEARS ago!"
• "Damaged" (4.11): six-year-old Rebecca Kurtz is shot and killed during the robbery of a video store, which also results in the accidental death of an innocent bystander outside. The robber himself, Eric Campbell, is killed as well, seemingly in self-defense by Joey Field, the store clerk and boyfriend of Rebecca's older sister Missy. Before Rebecca dies, the detectives discover that she has gonorrhea and extensive trauma from being raped multiple times. When they find that Missy (who had appeared distraught at her sister's death) also had gonorrhea, she points the finger at Joey, saying that he and Eric were friends and they forced her to bring Rebecca to the store that day. However, the detectives find a video of Missy and Joey sexually abusing a drugged-up Rebecca together (with her using her own sexual manipulation on him to get him to do it), and realize she, not him, is the one behind everything. It turns out that Missy at some point cheated on Joey, contracted gonorrhea, and then passed it on to Rebecca during the abuse. Rebecca, who was usually drugged unconscious during the rapes, woke up early one time, saw what was happening and threatened to tell their parents. To silence her, Missy orchestrated the store shooting with Joey and Eric's help. Eric is double-crossed and killed by Missy's instructions to eliminate him as a witness and to try and frame him as the sole conspirator. Unfortunately, at this point, Missy has already manipulated them and the D.A. into giving her immunity for her role in this in exchange for testifying against Joey, who is facing the death penalty for the murders. Thankfully, Cabot and Cragen make Joey see Missy for the psychopathic Manipulative Bitch that she is, and Cabot and Joey's lawyer father get Missy's immunity deal voided. By the end of the episode, she is now the one facing the death sentence for all of her crimes.
  • Mr. and Mrs. Kurtz suffer the death of their youngest daughter in a seemingly random robbery and then discover that their oldest daughter orchestrated the whole thing after raping and abusing her sister for months. And the worst part? They still love the daughter they adopted despite everything she has done. While they agree that she should be punished, they don't believe she should be executed and should be imprisoned instead. Unfortunately, because of the law, her inevitable execution means that now the Kurtzes will have to deal with the pain of losing both of their daughters.
  • Joey also gets feels as he genuinely loved Missy and was willing to do anything for her, even if it was wrong, all thanks to her evil manipulations. Afterwards, he is stunned to learn that she not only cheated on him but set him up to take the fall for all her crimes. And in the end, Joey avoids execution, but he's still facing a 25-to-life sentence for his part in everything. His whole life is now essentially ruined, all because he fell in love with a psychopath.
  • Missy, in spite of all her crimes, also garners sympathy due to her Dark and Troubled Past: her own biological father had not only raped her but pimped her out to his friends for years since she was five. When she was nine, her father was exposed and arrested (and later died of AIDS) and she entered the foster care system. However, Child Services, despite knowing of her abuse, never got her any much-needed therapy; whether it's because they didn't realize the extent of the abuse, simply didn't care enough, or couldn't get the resources for it remains unknown. In any case, Missy drifted through foster homes for the next three years while all the pain and trauma of her abuse was left to fester within her. By the time she was finally adopted by the loving Kurtzes at age twelve, it was already too late: the crucial bonding point of Missy's life was over, and all the memories of trauma and pain had warped her into a psychopath unable to feel remorse or form healthy emotional attachments. As such, she could feel nothing for her adoptive parents and only resentment for her later-born sister Rebecca, resulting in Missy's sexual abuse of her. The saddest part is Missy's cold response to getting caught and being told she will be executed, with her replying that she doesn't care and is "already dead"; she has been broken to the point where she no longer even cares if she lives or dies. Ultimately, this is a hollow victory for the detectives and Cabot, who know that the one who should be facing punishment for all this is Missy's biological father for abusing her, directly ruining her life, and indirectly destroying so many other lives in the long run.
• The father of the two perps in "Dominance" (4.20) is so traumatized from being beaten by his elder son that Fin and Duethorn yell at him, making him cower in fear and repeatedly plead for them to not hit him.
• Cheryl Avery from "Fallacy" (4.21) is a transgender woman who was viciously harassed after she started living as a woman, and was consequently abandoned by her family (excluding her younger sister), who are completely unsympathetic towards the multiple attacks she endured and in denial about her gender identity. When things start looking up after she finds a loving relationship, the guy's Jerkass brother finds out she's transgender and threatens to out her while attacking her in a bathroom at a party, prompting her to kill him in self-defense, then claim he tried to rape her. When the detectives find out, they tell the boyfriend (under the assumption that he already knew and killed his brother to protect Cheryl) and he rejects her, calling her a "freak" and later killing himself. In the end, it seems that Cheryl will be OK after she's able to get a good plea deal for only five years time. But later, she finds she'd have to serve her sentence in a men's prison (due to New York law only recognizing pre-operative transgender people by their gender assigned at birth at the time). Refusing to stop hormone therapy (since she would rather die than return to being something she's not) or accept protective custody (it entails solitary confinement 23 hours a day throughout her sentence), she is forced to go to trial and hope for acquittal. And as a cherry on the Woobie sundae, Cheryl is found guilty and sent to the men's prison anyways, where she is then violently gang-raped and put into a coma. Even worse is that we never see her again and don't even know if she survives the attack.
• In "Grief" (4.23) a distraught father of a raped and murdered victim hunts down the perp himself and kills him, and then goes to the park his daughter loved, intent on killing himself. Elliot, who's empathized with him the whole episode, talks him down and convinces him that his daughter wouldn't have wanted this and that her memory lives in him. It's a very moving scene, especially as Elliot approaches him and hugs him, taking his gun from him.

• The end of "Loss" (5.04), after Alex is shot:
  "Alex? ...Oh, no. No, no, no, no, no. Someone call an ambulance! Call 911! Now!! Alex, it's okay, Alex, look at me, it's okay, sweetie, stay with me, stay with me, you're going to be okay, Alex, you're going to be okay, do you hear me? You're going to be fine, you're going to be just fine, stay with me... Alex, it's okay... Alex? Alex...?"
  • And then immediately following that first stomping of viewer hearts, the DEA agents summon Stabler and Benson to close out the case. They reveal in the process that Alex isn't really dead, but has been put into witness protection. Olivia's heartbroken expression and hitching, choked voice in that scene has to be seen to be believed:
    Olivia: (whispers) Your funeral's tomorrow.
• The episode "Shaken" (5.10) is overall gut-wrenching, featuring a girl who suffered a brain injury at the hands of her mother.
  • Then there's the end of the episode, where Stabler (who has been incensed throughout the entire case, yet so empathetic towards the young girl as well) describes to Cragen a moment when as a young father under a lot of stress, he accidentally slapped his daughter for spilling juice on the carpet. Immediately after doing it he regretted it, but the case has brought it all back. His final summation of the incident says it all...
    Stabler (in tears): I could have killed my kid over a lousy carpet...
• "Families" (5.15): Teenaged Aidan really gets put through the wringer after his girlfriend is murdered. He finds out she was pregnant. His father is murdered and he is a suspect in both murders. Then he finds out the relationship was incestuous thanks to his father cheating on his mother, with his father having accidentally killed his half-sister/girlfriend. He also realizes that his mother was the one who killed his father. Filled with self-loathing, he tries to confess to his father's murder to at least protect his mother, but this is unsuccessful. In the end, his girlfriend/half-sister, child, and father are all dead, with his mother in prison. The only bright spot is the potential for him to build a relationship with his half-brother, whose mother has also ended up in prison for crimes related to the entire mess.
• In "Careless" (5.18) the initial belief is that the victim, a child, was smothered by a faith healer trying to cast demons out to cure his epilepsy. A bit off the wall? Yes. But the man is a man of genuine faith, who believed he was helping. His breakdown in the interrogation room is just sad. He's a genuinely good man who believes he killed a child. And the truth is, he didn't. The kid was already dead.
  • It only gets worse from there. The social worker who was repeatedly called by the exasperated-to-the-point-of-tears foster father of the child was unable to help because she was dealing with another case, and, after her name is besmirched and she loses her job, she kills herself. After this, it is revealed that there was another, previously unknown, foster child living with the family, who witnessed the death of the boy, but she was carted off to a psychiatric ward without anyone believing her. Fin gets her out, but it is also revealed that the foster mother would seriously abuse each of the children who came into the home, leading to them running away, and the foster mother was the one who killed the boy. At the very end of the episode, Fin, who witnessed the suicide and found out about all of the other events, is visibly disturbed and emotional, which is telling, considering how much of a hardass he usually is.
  • The foster father's heartbreak when his wife turns on him. For most of the episode, he was willing to go to prison to protect her, but when the tables were turned, she was all too willing to throw him under the bus to save her own skin. Even though he's not entirely innocent (he still stood by and let the abuse happen), it's hard not to feel at least a little sorry for him when he realizes that his wife doesn't love him the way he loves her but was just using him like she does everyone else. In addition, he truly seems sincere when he says he loved the boy like a son, meaning he'll also have the grief of that loss (and likely the guilt for not preventing it) to contend with for the rest of his life.
• The little girl from "Sick," (5.19) upon learning that her grandmother had been poisoning her just to garner sympathy for having a child dying of leukemia. The Woobie up to eleven.
• Mother of mercy, "Painless" (5.22), particularly the ending. Marlee Matlin plays a woman named Amy Solwey dying from kidney failure and is facing a retrial for a murder she did which ended in a hung jury, but ends up receiving a kidney through a donor. Knowing she will go to prison, she refuses to accept it, until Munch comes in and literally begs her to live, letting her know her life has value and that he shares her sense of guilt over the death of another person by admitting to her, and only her, that his father committed suicide when he was a child and that his last words to him were that he hated him. Knowing that this has Reality Subtext to it^note Richard Belzer's father died by suicide when Belzer was in his twenties, seeing Amy's reaction to his admission and her words of regret and seeing the usually stony-faced Munch on the verge of tears and telling her he doesn't want her to die is just heart-wrenching.

Seasons 6- 10

• The children dying at the hands of a cult leader in "Charisma" (6.07). Later, the leader tells Melanie, his twelve-year-old pregnant "bride" to shoot Olivia. Instead, she shoots him, leaving her sobbing.
  • The opening fifteen minutes of the episode may double with Nightmare Fuel. The squad walks into the aforementioned cult leader's home and the camera closes up on each of the detectives' faces when they find a pile of dead children. During mandatory psych evals, Munch admits to Huang that the terrifying part about this job is finding out that people are capable of becoming more depraved than he knew was possible, and Liv admits that she doesn't know if she can handle it. Following interviews, Fin willingly takes leave when the case makes him rethink his relationship with his son and Elliot is taken off the case because after he starts to tell Huang that one of the kids was wearing a nightshirt that his daughter also had, he then immediately clams up and shut it down, leading Huang and Cragen to worry (rightfully so) about the fact that he's not allowing himself to feel the emotions that were triggered by the incident. This is even Harsher in Hindsight given that in the next season, Elliot reveals (to a therapist and the audience) why it's so hard for him to talk about his feelings — his father taught him (through abuse) not to show emotion, and that "lesson" is now getting in the way of his ability to process traumatic events, something he desperately needs given his line of work.
• Avery Shaw's story in "Quarry" (6.13). His neighbor, Deacon Brinn, was abused by a pedophilic coach and then turned the abuse on Avery and his best friend Jeffrey Ronson and molested them. When Jeffrey fought back, Brinn broke his neck and forced Avery to help bury his body. In order to keep Avery quiet about the incident, Brinn convinced him that he would also get in trouble if he told. Avery remained quiet until adulthood, when he anonymously sent a letter to SVU detective Olivia Benson with the whereabouts of Jeffrey Ronson's body. During the SVU's investigation, Brinn wound up murdered, and Avery tried to take the fall for it because of his guilt for not stopping him and not coming forward sooner. He's also revealed to have an infant son that he's made a point to never meet, due to believing that he would develop pedophilic urges just like Deacon and be a danger to his son.
  • Also, in "Quarry", when Benson interviews the convicted and soon-to-be-executed aforementioned pedophilic coach, he has a My God, What Have I Done? moment.
    Biggs: I never hurt them... It never hurt me.
    Benson: You were abused.
    Biggs: My father left when I was a baby... And when I was about nine, this man moved in across the street. He was the only one I could talk to... He loved me, he cared for me... and touching me was how he showed it. (starts crying)
    Benson: I'm sorry.
    Biggs: (breaks down) I never meant to hurt the boys.
• The emotional whiplash-inducing final scenes of "Ghost" (6.16). Just as the squad is celebrating, the case has been won... "She wanted me to tell you goodbye."
• "Rage" (6.17): Elliot has all of his confidence and self-worth ripped to shreds by a criminal who bests him intellectually. All he can do is break down and beat his locker until his knuckles are bloody because he has nothing left.
• "Parts" (6.22): The detectives are forced to question people who need kidney transplants about a kidney that was illegally harvested/sold beyond NTCC regulations. Munch re-encounters Amy Solwey from "Painless", who gives up the name of the doctor transplanting kidneys illegally because Munch and Stabler threaten to re-arrest her (though they are clearly uncomfortable doing so). Munch and Stabler get to the hospital in time to stop the doctor from transplanting a kidney into a young boy whose family gave up nearly all of their money for the chance to save him. Munch and Stabler are then told that because the kidney was sold, the NTCC can't use it, but Munch attempts to sneak Solwey into the hospital for the transplant since she was next on the NTCC list anyway. However, doing so puts Munch's entire career at risk and Stabler and Novak tearfully go out of their way to request that the doctor and Solwey not report Munch's actions, lest he be jailed. Munch angrily asks Stabler if he wouldn't do the same if Stabler's son was in the same situation and Stabler doesn't have an adequate answer for him. Later on, Stabler arrests the father of the boy who needed the transplant, and has to explain to him boy that his father is in jail for trying to save him. The boy can't figure out what his father did wrong if he didn't hurt anybody and again, Stabler doesn't have an answer. Munch and Stabler barely manage to patch things up when Stabler mentions the boy was prioritized on the NTCC's list and that Solwey is right after. Munch visits Solwey to ask why she gave up her chance at a kidney for someone else, she says that she can wait for his sake, because she and the boy would both be getting kidneys if it had not been for her earlier actions. Munch asks her if she can wait that long, she takes his hand and says, "I'll take my chances." Given that we never see her again, it's doubtful she made it.

• "Design" (7.02), the episode involving sperm donors, features scene with a mother who brought her young daughter (around the age of 6) to the clinic and complained her daughter wasn't what she expected. Why? She used the sperm of a man who said he was a talented musician and she was mad her daughter played the piano badly and wasn't a talented musician yet... It is sad to see a mother treat her child as defective for such a superficial reason.
• In the episode "911" (7.03) when the little girl Maria tells Olivia
  Maria: He'll be back soon. I'll hear him on the stairs.
  Olivia: The stairs?
  Maria: When he comes to see me. Sometimes just his footsteps. Sometimes more. Those days I want to die.
  • The ending where they barely, barely manage to save her by last minute detective work and emergency rescuing. In a way it's heartwarming because Olivia did manage to do so, but only by the skin of her teeth.
• The episode "Ripped" (7.04), where Stabler talks about the abuse he suffered from his father. Elliot just gets this thousand-yard stare and talks about how his father ruined the diorama he made for school when he was eight, and when he started crying-
  "He took off his belt and he... he beat me with it."
  • Considering Stabler's rather tense relationship with shrinks after one nearly got him fired, his going to one willingly is a big sign that he's in some very dire straits.
• The second half of "Alien" (7.11): focuses on a girl being raised by lesbian moms. Partway through the episode, one of the mothers dies, and that mother's parents accuse the other mother of sexually abusing Emma. However, after sitting in on Benson's interview of the "victim", Huang disagrees, concluding that the "molestation" described by Emma was a legitimate, medical procedure, which her grandparents had manipulated her into believing was something sinister. It later turns out that a homophobic lawyer fed the grandparents false statistics about gay parents being more likely to molest children and then "helped" then sue for custody as part of his plan to promote his ideas. The lawyer is called out and the grandparents decide to testify against him, but the damage is already done: even though they apologize profusely, the surviving mother refuses to forgive and forget and announces that she will be denying them access to the child because of what they did. So in the end, everyone gets hurt, all because a homophobic lawyer wanted to use them to push his own agenda.
• Jennifer Durning and Jason King in "Gone" (7.16) might be two of the biggest victim Woobies within the first 10 years of the series. She was a Canadian student who came to New York on a class trip. She meets Jason, his cousin Nicky Pratt, and their friend Doug Waverly. The three boys take her out out clubbing and partying. Later, she and Jason have consensual sex in his car. Afterwards Nick and Doug decide they want some as well, and forcibly rape her. She returns to the hotel her class was staying at, tells her best friend about the rape and is later lured from the hotel and disappearing without a trace. Jason, Nicky, and Doug are later arrested for Jennifer's rape and murder by the SVU detectives. Out of loyalty, Jason refuses to say anything to incriminate his cousin and Doug. However, when the two turn on him and try to scapegoat him for the whole thing, he finally comes clean about the double rape and how the two decided to kill Jennifer to silence her. He later testifies against the two other boys at a grand jury hearing, but remains distraught over doing so despite their betrayal of him^note and even after his parents noted about Nicky's bad influence. His peers also make life hell for him (bullying, his friends abandoning him, etc.) to the point where his parents take him out of town to get away from everything until his testimony is needed.
  • Later, when complications arise ^note a man is revealed to have been in Jennifer's room and used the toilet, and is later revealed to have been paid by Nicky and Doug to lure Jennifer from the hotel, saying that he had her passport, and witnessed the boys force Durning into their car, but years of alcohol abuse addling his mind make him an unreliable witness, Stabler and Benson go to where Jason and his parents have been staying to question him further, only to find that he, like Jennifer, has vanished without a trace. The detectives and ADA Casey Novak know that Nick and Doug are behind it, but are unable to prove it. Worse, they can't put the trial on hold until they find Jason either^note The only way to do so is to drop the charges, but doing so at the current point would cause double jeopardy to attach, and prevent Nicky and Doug from ever being tried for Jennifer's rape and murder again.
  • Novak stalls by putting character witnesses on the stand while the detectives try to locate Jason. In the end though, after about a week, they come clean to the presiding judge Elizabeth Donnelly and notify her that she might have a leak in her office. Sure enough, a search turns up a planted transmitter bug in the office, which picked up Donnelly inputting the information about Jason's whereabouts into her Dictaphone. Unfortunately, Donnelly cannot declare a mistrial unless there is concrete proof that either Jason met with foul play or that Nick and Doug were behind the bug. Since the detectives have neither and Novak has run out of witnesses at this point, Donnelly is forced to dismiss the entire case against Nick and Doug with prejudice^note meaning that jeopardy has attached and they can never be tried for these crimes again. It at first appears that Jennifer and her family will never get answers or justice due to the two spoiled punks manipulating and seemingly beating the legal system.
  • However, the detectives discover that Emily McCooper, a court officer present during the proceedings, had been seduced and bribed by Nick into becoming a mole for him. When confronted, Emily tearfully confesses everything, including planting the bug and then picking Jason from his location under false pretenses and dropping him off with Nick and Doug at a warehouse owned by the latter's family. The detective's investigation leads to the car used when when they abducted Jennifer, with her blood found in the trunk. This means that the detectives had the evidence to convict on Jennifer's murder within their reach all along, but had missed it by inches^note the car had been towed, but the the system didn't flag it because the impound lot entered the plate number incorrectly.
  • They trace the car back to a canal near the Hudson River. There, they find one of the shoes Jennifer wore the night she vanished, thus proving she had been dumped there. However, her body has long since been swept away into the sea and is unlikely to turn up anytime soon, if at all. What does turn up though, is Jason's body; after killing him, Nicky and Doug dumped the body in the river just as they did Jennifer's, but unlike hers, it got caught on a pier nearby. Novak blames herself for forcing him to testify and indirectly contributing to his death, but Captain Cragen assures her that it's not her fault and that both he and Jennifer were dead the second they got caught up in Nicky and Doug's web of evil. With a renewed sense of justice, Stabler, Benson, and Novak arrest Nicky and Doug for Jason's murder while they're out celebrating getting away with Jennifer's murder with their families.
    • In all, Jason and Jennifer were just victims of circumstance in a way. They both just wanted to have a good time the night they met and, according to Jason, they seemed to have really clicked. If it hadn't been for Nicky and Doug deciding that they were above the law, they would both still be alive, and may have become something more. Jason even genuinely cared about his cousin and Doug and tried to protect them, but Nick and Doug betrayed him in the worst ways possible: first, by trying to scapegoat him for their crimes, and then by murdering him to stop him from turning against them in court. Just like the Spoiled Brats and Dirty Cowards they both truly are.
    • Despite the vindication of Nicky and Doug being arrested, it is also bittersweet, as Jason and Jennifer are both still dead, and in the latter's case, her remains will likely never be found and she'll likely never get to have a proper goodbye.
    • The entire case Ripped from the Headlines is based on the disappearance of 18-year old American Natalee Holloway who vanished on a class trip to Aruba in May 2005 and has never been found. Multiple suspects were arrested, but ultimately no one was ever charged and like Jennifer, Natalee's remains have never been located. However, similar to Nick and Doug, the case's prime suspect, Joran van der Sloot, in 2016 would be caught on tape confessing to killing Natalee, but gave no information on the whereabouts of her remains. In 2023, after being extradited to the US from Peru (where he was already in prison for a second murder) to face charges of trying to extort Natalee's mother for information about her death, van der Sloot, as part of a plea deal, finally admitted to beating Natalee to death on a beach for spurning his advances, and then dumping her body in the ocean.
• "Venom" (7.18) introduces Darius Parker, a murderer and a toxic influence on Fin's family, a despicable man all around. Nonetheless, he is at least somewhat sympathetic: he was a Child by Rape to Fin's ex Teresa Randall (to her own father) and was threatened by both Teresa and Fin to stay away from their son Ken. He spent the majority of his life believing he was just Ken's cousin, and when he found out the truth of his parentage, was absolutely livid. Near the end of the episode "Venom", when he's promising to bring Fin, his family, and his co-workers down in the coming criminal case against him.
• "Fault" (7.19)
  Olivia: What about your kids... what about me?

• "Uncle" (8.04) is a massive Tear Jerker for John Munch and his mentally disabled uncle Andrew (Jerry Lewis). Stabler and Beck find Andrew disheveled, injured, and with no memory of who he is, and they treat him like a perp. Munch finds him in a holding cell, huddled in a corner under a blanket. Munch helps him get his proper medication which seems to work...until Beck interviews a rape suspect front of Andrew. To make things worse, Andrew overhears Beck tell the victim she would put the needle in the perp's arm herself and he takes it seriously. The perp is let go due to lack of proper evidence. During a manic episode, Andrew pushes the man off the subway platform and he is killed. Rather than take the insanity plea to get help, Andrew chooses not to get help as a way to atone for what he had done. The normally unfettered John Munch looks ready to burst into tears when his uncle walks away after saying good-bye in a very somber voice.
• "Choreographed" (8.09) the episode immediately following "Cage," Beck's last. Elliot has trouble letting go, a lot, showing they had really made a connection in their short time together. Maybe also combined with his guilt in putting Dani in such horrific situations; they were part of the job, but her sympathy for the victims totally overwhelmed her, a Tear Jerker in itself.
• Darius Parker returns in "Screwed" (8.22). When he's cross-examining Teresa, one can see that intense pain in his face as well as barely-contained rage and despair... which escalates when she finally confesses to the truth Darius was a Child by Rape to Teresa's own father) and that was why he was The Unfavorite in his family.
  • The final shot of Darius at the courthouse. He's gotten everything he ever wanted: the detectives of the SVU are facing justice, the mother who loathed him from the moment he was born has been humiliated in front of the whole world, and he's literally gotten away with two murders, including that of an infant... and he has nothing to show for any of it. He just goes back to the same life he had before he was arrested, only now he knows the Awful Truth about his parentage and, now that he's ruined any chance of reconciling with his family, he'll have to figure out how to process it without the support of his adoptive cousin/half-brother/nephew Ken, who was the one person in his life who ever truly cared about him, but has now disowned him for everything he did to his victims, his mother, and the detectives.
    • You can especially see some remaining pain in Darius's hardened expression in this as Fin and Ken leave him on the entrance to the courthouse. Even though he defiantly says just prior that he doesn't want to have anything to do with any of his family because of everything he went through by their hands, the look in his eyes as he watches the only two family members who ever cared about or showed any genuine sympathy for him walk out of his life for the final time almost comes of as a My God, What Have I Done? look, and he realizes that while he has gotten away with his crimes and remains a free man (for now), he is now completely alone in the world and haunted by the revelations about his conception.
• "Savant" (9.04):
  • Katie Nicholson is one of the sweetest, most innocent kids ever presented on this show, but she is also very disabled and surrounded by terrible people, including a dad, Ben, who loves her but is also involved in shady deals, a mother, Corinne, who secretly resents her, and a "friend", Alex, who really hates her mom. All of this comes out when her mother is beaten into a coma and she happens to be the only witness to the attack, resulting in her having to deal with the entire SVU investigation process with only a dodgy Dirty Coward father protecting her and people who she thought were friends actively working against her because their son is the culprit. Even with all the detectives and Casey doing everything they can to make her comfortable, she still ends up getting grilled by Chauncey Zeirko, one of the show's most ruthless defense attorneys, and it's hard to watch as he tries to exploit all of her weaknesses in order to discredit her.
  • In the end, Casey helps Katie get justice for her mom, but it's at a steep cost; Ben has learned that Corinne deliberately sought to get pregnant in the hopes of having a non-disabled child, and has her custody of Katie revoked and bans her from the house — and since Katie lacks the capacity to comprehend the situation, all she knows is that she's now being separated from her mother for reasons she doesn't understand (the scene of her crying as she's pulled away from her mother really tugs at the heart). Meanwhile, Corinne has absolutely no idea why all this is happening to her, because she's lost all memory of the past few months, and thus doesn't even remember having an affair; when she first comes out of the coma, she panics that she's missing her daughter's heart surgery, which happened a year earlier.
• "Inconceivable" (9.14): the detectives are trying to find a cryotank full of embryos that were 'kidnapped' from a clinic. The detectives hear the stories of the various families and women that had their embryos removed for some reason or another and become more determined to find the tank in the three days they have before the liquid nitrogen in the tank runs out and renders the embryos invalid for implantation. It turns out the tank was taken by a couple that were attempting to raise awareness for their cause (they feel the fertility clinic in question is a death camp that discriminates against certain kind of eggs that may carry genetic defects). With the 'kidnapping' story bringing the attention they wanted, the couple attempted to return the embryos via delivery, on the last day they could have done so, without considering that the delivery may be late. The detectives get to the tank, but once they get to the clinic, the doctor confirms that the embryos didn't survive. One of the extremists responsible ends up getting killed outside the courtroom and the detectives are forced to investigate all the families as suspects in the extremist's murder, including a couple of little people that wanted their child to look like them ^note they were primarily doing IVF because they had a high risk of having a child with a fatal genetic disorder if they conceived naturally (they had already lost their first child to it) and wanted to make sure that didn't happen, but things had come to a head because the doctor only wanted to implant embryos that had the genes for standard height, and the couple disagreed, a couple who was worried their family line would end with their disabled daughter ^note that one's a little creepy in execution, but the worry is still a valid concern in real life, and a woman who had her eggs fertilized and the resulting embryos frozen because she needed to undergo chemo which would make her sterile^note that one's especially heartbreaking because while the other couples could at least start the process over, her eggs are gone, so now she'll never be able to have a biological child.
  • The man that murdered the extremist turns out to be the husband of a woman in the armed forces who had had her eggs frozen so that her husband could have at least one child to remember her by if she was a casualty in Iraq — and she died within a few days of the incident, close enough that her body was flown in on the same day as the arraignment. With his wife dead and their emergency way of having a child posthumously now gone, the man murdered the extremist in revenge. Regardless of how you feel about the subject matter, it's really hard not to feel sorry the families whose last chance to have children were in that tank, and it's especially hard not to feel terrible for the widowed man at the end who lost everything in a matter of days.
• The surprisingly graphic scene of Olivia being sexually assaulted and nearly raped towards the end of the episode "Undercover" (9.15). The very sound of Olivia screaming and pleading as she attempts to fight off her attacker is enough to reduce anyone to tears.
• In "Authority" (9.17) Merritt Rook's backstory. Basically, he lost his wife and unborn baby in childbirth because, even though he could see that things were going wrong, he thought her doctor knew what he was doing and didn't challenge him, only to realize after the fact that if he had, he could have saved her life. While his actions are still inexcusable, it's clear that at the core, his worldview is about trying to make people willing to challenge authority figures so that they might not have to suffer the way he did.

• The very end of the episode "Trials" (10.01) where Olivia is describing to the therapist about nearly being raped and how the event has taken its toll on her mentally and emotionally; specifically when she says in a broken voice, "I feel like he stole something from me."
• "Swing" (10.03) shows us an angle of Detective Stabler he'd rather keep secret: when his daughter Kathleen is diagnosed with bipolar disorder after a B&E and a drug overdose, Elliot knows she got it from his side of the family, since his mother Bernadette has it. He goes to visit his mother and ask her to go to tell the judge about the family's history of mental illness. It goes poorly, as Bernadette breaks down into an almost child-like state, building a sand castle while reminiscing about a family vacation to the beach in Elliot's youth. Elliot's recollection of the vacation was not as fond: during a particularly bad manic episode, she took his father's sidearm and tried to shoot them both—fortunately, his father always made sure the gun was unloaded because she had threatened to use it on them multiple times. Later, when Olivia talks to Bernadette to try and help Kathleen, she reveals that after the incident, she was committed to a mental facility and given medication that made her feel so miserable that she'd rather die than take them. Needless to say, the relationship between Elliot and his mother was rather troubled since then.
  • For an added stinger, when Olivia is talking to Bernadette about being committed, she does everything she can to leave out why, making it sound like her husband did it for his own cruel reasons. Given that she tried to handwave the attempted shooting away to Stabler himself earlier, it makes her look like a really selfish individual. She arguably redeems herself when she does go to her granddaughter Kathleen in prison and tells her about an incident in which she took Stabler for a drive in the middle of a snowstorm, flooring the accelerator in a manic-induced fit of glee until she crashed the car right into a lamppost, giving her son a broken arm. This persuades Kathleen to admit to herself that she is bipolar and agree to undergo rehab rather than being imprisoned.
• The end of the episode "Wildlife" (10.07): Stabler has been undercover in an animal smuggling ring. When he busts it, it turns out that one of the smugglers was also an undercover cop. As he's being arrested (so he can become a Deep Cover Agent in the prison gang that masterminded the smuggling op), Stabler asks him if there's anything he wants to pass on to his family. The guy answers that he doesn't have a family anymore: They left because his lifestyle was too much for them to handle. It's the actor's delivery that really sells how heartbreaking that is, especially since a major theme of Elliot's character arc is the effect that his job has on his own family life.
  • What really seals it is the next scene, where we see Elliot with Kathy and Eli. He's clearly decided he's not going to let that happen to him (and, indeed, they don't have another incident like that one for the rest of Stabler's time as a regular on the show).
• In "Stranger" (10.11), a missing teenage girl named Heather returns home after being kidnapped and held as a sex slave for four years. She is eventually exposed as an imposter. At first the unit is inclined to believe her entire story was made up, but Olivia disagrees, believing her to be traumatized. She is proven right; the imposter is actually a different missing child named Kristen, and her story of abuse is even worse than what she told them: she was held for longer than the original story indicated (six years rather than four), and her abuser was her own father who kidnapped her after her mother was awarded custody. She tells Olivia that she never meant to hurt anyone and only pretended to be Heather so she'd have a place to go after she ran away. When Olivia asks Kristen why she didn't go home to her own mother, Kristen replies that her mother died, her father showed her the obituary. Olivia then tells her that it was a lie, her mother is alive and wants to see her. If the look on Kristen's face at hearing that doesn't get the tears flowing, the subsequent scene of her finally being reunited with her mother will.
  • And the real Heather? Her sister Nikki murdered her after Heather caught her doing drugs and threatened to tell their parents. Their mother found out the truth not long afterwards, but kept it a secret because she "couldn't lose two daughters". But eldest sister Erica's reaction is the most gut-wrenching. She yells at her mother for hiding this from the rest of the family, and can barely bring herself to even look at her.
    Erica: You knew? You knew this whole time?!
  • The ending: Nikki tries to kill Kristen the same way she killed Heather, because she knew her Dark Secret was unraveling. Olivia and Elliot are able to save Kristen, and Erica talks Nikki out of killing herself. As Nikki is arrested, she says this to Kristen.
    "The police gave up looking for Heather a long time ago. Why did you pick us?"

• "Hothouse" (10.12) really gets going once the detectives find out that the girl found in the Hudson River wasn't a prostitute, but a genius in an academy. It turns out the girl had been put through Training from Hell to make her smarter by her gambling-addicted father, as shown by her sister, whose knees had pieces of rice embedded in them where he forced them to kneel in it while they worked. The sister was tossed out of the house because she couldn't be as smart as the victim (and because she was such a young age, she couldn't even get a job other than waitressing to take care of herself) and the father would use the winnings the daughter made to fuel his addiction, while his wife was working multiple menial jobs just to keep a roof over their heads, which had the side effect of her not being around to witness the worst of the abuse or to protect her daughters. It gets worse when they finally catch the culprit — a fellow student who was once thought friends with the victim. Under pressure from the school to perform at a near-impossible level and pathologically jealous of how easy the victim had it (due to her genius-level IQ), she began abusing drugs so she could stay up to do her work, causing severe sleep deprivation. This ultimately leads to her broken admission of guilt at how she killed the victim — basically an extreme overreaction caused by a psychotic break — tearfully asking her mother if she's happy she's the best now.
  • The reaction on the perp's mother was just as heartbreaking. Imagine you wanting to be a good mother, so you get your daughter the best education a child could have only to find out long after shit has hit the fan that your daughter cracked under academic pressure and became utterly psychotic due to stress that you never knew she was enduring.
  • Even the detectives know a difference between a child who kills with glee and a child who killed out of a psychotic episode as Jennifer did. Jennifer has absolutely no recollection of what's going on because the desire for her to succeed is so massive she is taking pills that prevent her from sleeping for days!
  • In a bit of Fridge Sadness, consider Danny and Elsa's friendship. Despite the detectives' initial (and understandable) assumptions about why a twenty-three-year-old guy would hang out with a teenage girl, it turns out there really wasn't anything untoward going on; he was a Big Brother Mentor and friend, quite possibly her only real friend. Given how difficult her extreme intellect would make connecting with people her age (even other gifted children), and the abuse she suffered both by her father and the school, it's very likely Danny was one of the only people who Elsa could really relate to, and he very clearly wanted her to escape Morewood and have an ordinary childhood, something he didn't get. He was scared about what the school's toxic environment would do to her, and in the end, he was absolutely right, just not in the way he expected. In the end, he's lost a good friend to the "win at all costs" culture he managed to escape.
  • Just the fact that Danny dropped out only a month before graduation and now lives in a tiny apartment and has apparently no ambitions in life. While he seems content with his lot and seems to be fairly well-adjusted compared to the other Morewood kids. It's sad to see what the school did to him. How many bright, creative kids have had their ambition and passion crushed out of them by this horrible place?

• The ending of "Snatched" (10.13). "Sometimes, even if you want something real bad, you shouldn't have it." Said about a Papa Wolf of an ex-con who got himself sent back to prison specifically to get his beloved daughter sent into foster care, because he thinks she's better off without him.
• "Transitions" (10.14) has many Tear Jerker moments. The detectives investigate who violently bashed a man in the groin to the point of rupturing his scrotum. The man, Mark Van Kuren is revealed to be going through a divorce from his wife Ellen because they disagree over their transgender child Hailey. As the detectives learn, the dysphoria of being a girl despite being assigned male at birth has been painful for Hailey, especially when her parents failed to understand and accept her, to the point where she tried to cut her penis off with nail clippers at age 4 while screaming "God made a mistake!" and attempted suicide at age 10 by consuming bleach. While her mother started to come around after this, her father has remained steadfast in being against Hailey transitioning, and has done everything he can to stop it from happening and force her back into being a boy, hence the divorce.
  • Hailey is initially considered a strong suspect due to her strong anger towards her father and physical assaults on students and teachers who have made fun of (or in the teachers' cases, failed to understand) her transition. It's later revealed that her school counselor Jackie Blaine is the true culprit: having seen how miserable and suicidal Mark's unintentional emotional abuse had made Hailey, Jackie attacked him in a stand for her. After Jackie is arrested, Hailey, distraught and blaming herself for the apparent loss of her closest confidant and feeling that her desperation to transition has ruined the lives of everyone who cares about her, tries to take responsibility for the attack, but attempts suicide again. Hailey survives and is hospitalized, and Jackie goes on trial.
  • Later, Stabler talks to Hailey at her home, and tries to assure her that deep down, her father does love her, but he just has such a hard time letting go of the son that Hailey was born as on the outside and embracing the daughter that she truly is inside. When Hailey asks Stabler what he would do if one of his sons came out as transgender, Stabler tells her that he would try to understand and be there for him, and that it wouldn't be easy and mistakes would be made along the way, but Stabler would never stop loving him. His honest words ultimately drive Hailey to tears.
  • But the biggest tearjerker comes during Jackie's trial. On the witness stand, Jackie reveals why she was so close to Hailey and could identify with so much of her issues: she herself is a trans woman! Like Hailey, she knew that she was truly a girl despite being physically born a boy from a young age. But in the time that she grew up in, there were little to no resources to help transpeople like in the present: there were no hormone blocker pills to help them with the physical transition, no special counselors for them to confide in about their feelings and problems, no support groups to join to be assured that they were not alone in the world; there was surgery, but one had to live as the opposite gender for at least three years before a doctor would even consider it, despite this being incredibly risky. Jackie goes on to explain how hard it was for her and others like her back then, about all the abuse they would suffer, and then goes on to tell how she was ambushed, beaten, and then castrated/emasculated by three men after leaving a bar one night. Recalling this drives Jackie to tears and leaves just about everyone, including Hailey, absolutely stunned.
  • Ultimately, hearing Jackie's testimony finally makes Mark wake up and realize all the hell he put Hailey through by trying to force her to remain a boy, as well as potentially all the hell she'll go through (both by herself emotionally and by way of others) if she isn't allowed to be herself and is not supported by those closest to her. He tries to convince ADA Greyleck to let him drop the charges, but she tells him that it's too late for that, and even if it wasn't, Jackie still can't get away with what she did to him. In the end, though, the detectives convince Greyleck to plead Jackie out, and Jackie is sentenced to eight years in prison, while Mark finally gives support to his daughter's transition. And to top it off, the counselor and pupil are allowed to say goodbye before Jackie is taken away to prison.

• In the episode "Hell" (10.17) Elijah using his last words to tell the girl he viewed as a sister that he committed Suicide by Cop so that people would see the other child soldiers.
• The episode "Baggage" (10.18) features a detective Stabler works with to catch a serial killer, whose wife and daughter left as a result of his being obsessed with his work and were involved in a car accident, the wife dying on impact and his daughter in a coma for five months when the episode takes place. At the end of the episode, the detective is sitting in the hospital, telling Stabler his daughter was in surgery. A few moments later, a doctor asks him if he wants to see her. After he says yes, doctors are seen carrying coolers with organs to be donated. The detective says it's a second chance, and everyone deserves one.
• "Selfish" (10.19) deals with a young girl going missing. The girl's grandfather, Ralph, who got on the wagon when she was born, fell off during the ordeal. Stabler helps him to get back on while the police search for her. Sadly, she turns up dead. A woman whose son was not vaccinated, caught measles and spread it to the infant girl (who was too young to be vaccinated, herself) is arrested and tried, but found not guilty. Ralph helps his daughter, the victim's mother, see that there is hope for the future and that the best thing to do is to live a life her daughter would be proud of. Sadly, his idiot wife talks them both into trying to get revenge. Ralph storms the defendant's house, proclaiming that she took two lives, and turning a gun on himself.
  • What also stings about the episode is that the mother with the unvaccinated son is so cold and dismissive to the fact her son getting measles did lead to the death of another child and even blames the other mother. With how many anti-vax mothers exist in real life this mother's carelessness in vaccinating her son rings true to real life. Her reaction at the end shows that this might be what she needed to change her anti-vax stance.
• "Crush" (10.20) is already rough for the character being focused on, Kim, her boyfriend is physically abusing her and then forced her to take nude photos of herself and then sends them around to the school a bit of jealousy. He is arrested after it is revealed, but then the big plot starts. Kim is shown to be a victim, but the first judge says she is still to blame and sentences her to time in prison. Turns out this judge is taking bribes and sending kids such as Kim to prison on purpose to get a 'kickback' especially to where she sends them. She has been doing this for years. In the end her trick is uncovered and she herself is charged (while also weakly defending it as the kids deserve it) and the charges are dropped for Kim, but the fact she was already being abused in high school by someone she thought she loved and almost sentenced to real prison time for his sick trick and probably had to register as a sex offender because a judge wanted a bonus is so sad.
• "Liberties" (10.21) is a strange tearjerker episode that is very complicated to explain. But the short story is that the rapist originally on trial is revealed to be the son of the judge. His son had been kidnapped by a man who sexually abused him and after all those years, the judge and his son were reunited. In spite of all the ugliness that surrounded it, it was really tearjerking to see the two reunite.

Seasons 11- 15

• "Quickie" (11.11): A man is knowingly giving women HIV because of some messed trauma. In retaliation for giving her the disease, one of the women throws acid on him. He presses charges especially after his name is leaked to the press, but she wasn't the one who did it. It was his legal guardian and grandfather who did so after he realized what a monster his grandson was becoming. It turns out his lie about the criminal's mother abandoning him is partly what ruined him and made him have such a distrust of women. She had killed the man she was dating and abusing both her and him when he was a child and she died in prison. His granddad thought that telling him the truth would've have had more negative effects, but he was wrong. He then kills himself and says "Don't let me die in vain," and just dies. The rapist, of all characters bursts into tears and swears he will change; he drops the charges and pleads guilty.

• "Shattered" (11.24). If Sophie's breakdown doesn't get to you, the lullaby she sings to her dead son will. Guaranteed.
  "Je t'aime... je t'aime, Nicholas..."

• The episode "Locum" (12.01) has a girl named Mackenzie who has been adopted by a couple whose daughter Ella was kidnapped years prior; her new mother has her chipped, dyes her hair, forces her to get a nose job and wear the kidnapped daughter's clothes, all in an effort to replace her. In the ending, Ella is found and her parents are so happy to see her... but Mackenzie, with her dyed hair and mutilated face, is standing in the background, forgotten and discarded.
  • And then there's Ella herself. Her abductor was a man who had recently been left by his wife and wanted Ella — a ten-year-old child— to take her place. Ella appears onscreen only very briefly and has only one line, but her actress uses her silence and facial expressions very effectively to communicate the horrors Ella's been through. And then she finally gets to come home to her loving parents, and her relief and joy at being reunited with them, being safe and loved again after ten years of captivity, is plain to see. Despite what it means for Mackenzie, you really can't help but feel for Ella in that moment.
• "Bullseye" (12.02) begins with a girl named Rose, who, on top of having been raped, has parents who are complete and total gaming addicts, neglecting her in favor of video games. To make matters worse, Rose's mother has Capgras syndrome from a brain injury in a car accident and it caused her to be unable to recognize Rose as her daughter, thinking Rose had been replaced with a doppelganger. Because the delusion is only triggered by the sight of Rose, when they talk over an intercom, Rose's mother recognizes that Rose is her daughter and tells her she loves her, but when Rose, overwhelmed by the first bit of affection she's gotten from her mother in months, runs in to hug her, the delusion kicks in and Rose's mother slaps her across the face.
  Mother: THAT! IS NOT! MY ROSE!
  • And it just ends there!
  • The second arc about Edwin is even sadder. Sure he committed an awful crime in his past, but the guy seems like he genuinely wants to change his life and when he's brought into this case, he hopes his poor wife (who is also carrying their child) doesn't find out. Sadly, she does. This is the final straw for Edwin, who commits suicide probably not wanting his poor child to know about him, and to add insult to injury, the cops think he did it out of guilt for his "crime" when in reality, he was innocent and the guy who was crushing on Olivia, Erik, was the real culprit. The guy only killed himself because he knew his life was over.
  • And poor Erik's sister! The guy is a serious sicko, but to lie that his sister was raped and that she committed suicide from it just so he could look innocent while knowing full well that she was alive and he was the rapist is really sad, but adding to that sad fact is that she believed he'd never do it again, but he continued to rape her numerous times. The hatred she shows towards him and seeing her destroy that creepy potrait would make anyone cry.

• The episode "Rescue" (12.10) is a particularly hard-hitting episode. A few episodes earlier, Olivia became the legal guardian of a junkie's son, then this episode comes and, without going into too much detail, it gets wrested away from her.
• "Spectacle" (12.16), when the police finally know who kidnapped the perp's brother: a woman who lost her 3-year-old son to leukemia...and kidnapped the perp's brother in order to fill the void. As the police find the perp's brother and rescue him she's screaming and crying that they can't take him because he's her son... She's crazy, yes, but it doesn't help that she was obviously psychologically broken by her son's death.
  • The Bittersweet Ending: the perp finally gets his brother found after eight years, only to have to go to jail for what he did. However, given that the crime was staging an attack with his friends and putting it online for the world to see (in order to get the police's attention and get them to find his brother), and the fact that the detectives didn't exactly waste police resources (given that they both found his brother and arrested his abductor), it's possible he could get leniency.
  • This episode has two cases of the bystander syndrome. In the first part, we see a live streaming video aired from a college campus as many watch a blonde haired girl being held hostage by a masked captor with a knife on a bare mattress in presumably a dorm room, and the video is not even reported to the police until it finishes airing. In another part, we hear about the abducted missing boy, a few witnesses say that they all have seen a man kidnapping the boy, but attempted to do nothing, because they think someone else would notify the police (not as terrible as the previous considering their intents was not entirely that heartless given their provided reasons, but still quite sad considering how realistic the show is).
• In "Pursuit" (12.17), after Sonya Paxton is murdered, Elliot leaves the FBI academy he'd been visiting for most of the episode and meets up with Olivia in the hospital. Olivia rushes to him and says "I'm really glad you're back." in a choked-up voice, before the two embrace. Also doubles as a Heartwarming Moment.
• The episode "Bombshell" (12.19) is just heartbreaking all the way around. A father is stabbed coming out of a swingers' club. It turns out it was done by his wife, who wasn't jealous and had in fact endorsed the idea of the club to spice up their marriage, but was instead angered over the fact he'd fallen in love with a woman named Cassandra at the club, and was emptying their bank account and even their daughter's college fund to give this woman money. The wife clearly didn't do this out of malice, just out of drunken frustration and helplessness.
  • The guy himself comes off as really sad when it's revealed that he's been played for a sap by two con artists. Yet he's still in love with Cassandra, posting her bail with what's left of his money and stating she's his soulmate. When Benson and Stabler reveal she's in a relationship with her twin brother, the other con artist, his expression becomes heartbreaking. He finally descends into Sanity Slippage and kills her brother so she'll finally be with him. When instead of running into his arms like he thinks she will, and instead seeing her crying over her brother's dead body, the expression on his face suggests he's only now realizing that he's just ruined his entire life for no good reason.
  • Even Cassandra comes off a little as a Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds. She and her brother may have been con artists that fleeced men out of their money and murdered one when he got too close to figuring things out, but she was in a genuine relationship with her twin where they both loved each other. The detectives call it Squick, but she states they're destined to be together forever since they share a bond no one else will ever understand. When he's killed, the last shot is of her sobbing and pleading over his dead body to Please, Don't Leave Me.

• "Scorched Earth" (13.01) Benson's reaction when she finds out that Elliot won't be coming back, made all the worse by the fact that he didn't even tell her himself. At the end of that episode, she can only lock herself in an interrogation room and cry at losing her best friend.
• The ending of the episode "Personal Fouls" (13.02), when basketball star Prince Miller testifies about his childhood sexual abuse to the grand jury, and then held a press conference about it.
  • Notably, throughout the entire episode, Miller carries himself with an air of arrogance and pride, refusing to admit that anything happened to him by his coach's hand. It's not until the detectives bring him to see the coach and show him that he has a new "favorite" that Miller finally agrees to testify and publicly admit his abuse. And even more, he removes his sunglasses, which he had never been seen without during the episode (including while indoors and at night), allowing people to see the true pain in his eyes for the first time as he urges other victims of the coach's sexual abuse to come forward, promising them that the shame and pain they feel truly belongs to the coach, not them.
  • In that same episode, seeing Aaron Tveit's character of Stevie Harris, a fellow basketball prodigy and former childhood friend of Miller's who fell into drugs following his own molestation by the same basketball coach break down in tears is pretty heartbreaking, mostly because he's just so convincing doing it. It's made worse by the fact that he dies later in the episode by a forced overdose. And the kicker? Miller's cousin/manager ends up being the one behind it, having done so to protect Miller's image and reputation, and thus, his cash flow.
  • The coach's current victim breaking down while watching the press conference.
• In "Russian Brides" (13.07), Captain Cragen goes undercover as bait for a mail-order bride service that targets lonely and vulnerable older men. As he plays the part, he begins telling the potential bride about his late wife and the worry he has for "his people" — he obscures the details, but he's quite clearly talking about his real life and his real worry for the SVU squad. To top it off, he knows they're listening on a wire.
• The victim of "Lost Traveler" (13.09) is a ten-year-old little boy who is allowed to go to school on his own for the first time—and gets kidnapped and brutally murdered on his way back. That poor boy's social life is a tearjerker on its own: He gets bullied at school, doesn't have any friends, his parents (who are apparently the only people in the world who care about him) are outcasts in their neighborhood due to being Romani, which makes him a regular target of assault. His murderer tortures him with burning cigarettes before strangling him with his own scarf. But the worst part is, that the one who kidnapped and killed him was an older girl from his school who seemed to like him in the beginning and even protected him from another bully. Her reasoning for the murder: "Why not? He's a gypsy's kid, no one will miss him." Let that sink in for a minute: This child dies lonely and terrified (he even wets his pants from fear during the attack), gets cruelly tortured while fully conscious. All of this done by the first person in probably ever who didn't bully him for being a Roma, but still targeted him because she figured fewer people would care.
• "Spiraling Down" (13.10) starts badly, with a runaway teenage being taken advantage of and pimped out. It turns out one of her customers was an ex-NFL player who is suffering from CTE. This is eventually revealed in court as his lawyer fights to prevent him from going to prison. Watching the ex-player break down on the stand and the reactions of everyone in the classroom as they see a New York City icon fall apart before their very eyes is just heartbreaking. The ending where he's Driven to Suicide is even worse.
• Olivia's breakup with EADA David Haden at the end of "Justice Denied" (13.17) is hands down the saddest breakup on the show, because their feelings haven't changed one whit— but their jobs are now tearing them apart. You're left with the strong impression that things might have actually gone right for Olivia this time, if it wasn't for their mutual dedication to their work — which is one of the things that brought them together in the first place. The irony and sense of utter loss is excruciating.
• "Friending Emily" (14.06): The detectives are hunting a child pornographer who has kidnapped a girl on a class trip, and their only lead is Wendi, a former victim who he has twisted into supporting him. He has deluded Wendi into believing he is the only person who cares about her and that her family didn't even report her missing, so Olivia gets her mother and sister (who haven't seen her in over a decade at this point and didn't even know if she was alive or dead until SVU contacted them) on a video chat to tell her the truth — that they love her and miss her (her sister even has a baby that she named after her) and how they never stopped looking for her. Wendi breaks down and tells Olivia everything.
• "Girl Dishonored" (14.20) sees the SVU once again clashing with the infamous Tau Omega fraternity. This time the victim is a college freshman named Lindsay who commits suicide due to the trauma of the rape and the slut shaming from other students. Investigation throughout the episode also leads the SVU to another victim of the fraternity, Renee Clark, who was pressured to not file charges and then committed to a mental facility to silence her.
• "Wonderland Story" (15.05) has the plot of a girl who was raped a second time in the series by a different perp, and doubting whether she can trust men again. But the true tearjerker comes into play with the side plot of Munch's retirement. The episode ends with Munch questioning Cragen about where all the time went, and then has him sitting at his desk, flashing back to his time in Homicide before receiving a phone call from a victim, and declares "homicide" before correcting himself and saying that he'll get a detective on the line.

• "October Surprise" (15.06): ADA Barba is trying to hold himself together for much of the episode, suffering criticism from two of his closest childhood friends, and Amaro for his inability to choose whether his loyalty to his friends or his job to do what is right is more important. He spends much of the episode trying to deny his friend could cheat on the woman he himself was once in love with, but ultimately chooses to report Munoz when enough evidence comes to light. When Barba, holding back tears, attempts to confront Munoz and offers him a way out, Munoz taunts Barba with the fact that he's married to his childhood love and then humiliates Barba publicly. Barba is seen drinking with Olivia and Nick later, and when it is implied that Munoz ultimately avoids a formal trial and continues his run for mayor, Barba is seen sitting at the arraignment with a look on his face that just tells you he's wondering if his sense of justice was worth losing his friends and reputation.
• “Dissonant Voices” (15.07) has a depressing ending once the SVU team learns the truth about the allegations against Jackie. He never was guilty of anything, but was instead defamed by two bitter former students of his. One was so mad that she wasn’t chosen to go on “American Diva” and conspired with her friend to coach their younger brothers into lying about being molested by Jackie. They went as far as buying a vibrator and putting it in his classroom to back up their brothers’ claims. Even worse is that Jackie tried to convince the SVU that he didn’t do anything, but his words fell on deaf ears until they finally realized he was telling the truth. While he may have been exonerated and released from prison, his career and reputation are effectively ruined because of what happened. Before he parts ways with the team, he makes it clear that he is angry that they unwilling to listen to him until it was too late. This episode’s ending is one of the most depressing ones as it emphasizes the fact that the team only helped in ruining the man’s career rather than saving it.
• "Gambler's Fallacy," (15.17) at the end, when Benson figures out that Rollins was caught in an illegal casino. She chews Amanda out and says that even if Lt. Murphy trusts Amanda, she does not and wants to, but can't, transfer her to another department. Rollins breaking down in tears over how badly she messed up her friendship and relationship with Benson is painful to watch; it even looks like Benson is saddened as well.
  Rollins: (sobbing) Um... I don't know if I can get back into your good graces, but I'm gonna try, Sergeant.
  Benson: (frostily) Okay. We're done here.

Seasons 16- 20

• In "Pornstar's Requiem" (16.05), Evie Barnes, a female college student has been doing rape porn to pay her tuition. She ends up being raped for real by two guys, although one of them was tricked by the other into thinking it was all fake and feels horrible for participating. Evie's parents (especially her father) think mostly about how this affects them and not the fact that their daughter was raped. As expected, she ends up being slut-shamed and ostracized, and the university expels her, ostensibly for filming porn, even though it's heavily implied that it's for putting the university into a bad light for allowing rape to take place on its grounds. There is a Hope Spot when the jury finds the leader of the two guys guilty (the other having taken a plea for probation instead of prison in exchange for testifying for the prosecution), only to be squashed when the judge overturns the verdict and declares that, in this case, "no" did not mean "no". Barba is shocked and outright tells the judge that he's just set back rape law by years. He files for an appeal, but Evie has had enough at this point. She ends up leaving her home and becomes a porn star full time, claiming that there's nothing else out there for her anymore. At least, as she puts it, in the adult films, when she asks them to stop, they stop. The last shot of her is of her walking topless into a crowd of dozen male actors. Unlike certain porn starlets or those who are just in it for the money, Evie looks like she is literally dead in eyes and voice: utterly dehumanized by people outside of porn. Of course, the worst part is that there will always be people, who think that she got exactly what she deserved.
  • What really hits hard is that Evie DID everything a rape victim is told to do. She fought back and reported her rapists yet continued to lose because of political influence. She saw her claim thrown out just because of a few porns she did herself just to pay the bills (and, despite improvements, porn still remains a VERY exploitative industry). Working in porn or other adult entertainment to pay for bills and tuition is becoming a rising thing hampered by the negative viewpoints connotations against it; but tragically and disgustingly...the more awful stuff like the rape porn movies Evie starred in will pay more money.
  • Also, the judge states that Daniel was showing behavior that a rapist wouldn't. Never mind that Daniel was continually noticeably smiling for the entire duration of the first day of trial, showing a mindset of "I'm about to get away with rape." It's utterly crushing to hear the judge's logic being that Daniel seemed genuinely remorseful for his actions, while Evie needed to learn to treat her body with more respect, when all she was trying to say was that regardless of her choices, she shouldn't have gotten raped.
• "Padre Sandunguero" (16.12). Dear lord, Padre Sandunguero. If Amaro's abusive father coming back to Nick's life to tell him he's marrying a woman younger than Amaro, and his family getting angry at him for being reluctant to accept the wedding invitation isn't enough, there is also said father promptly being arrested for assaulting his new wife, which terrifies Amaro's daughter, Amaro being forced to testify against him, thus alienating his family, Barba revealing that his own father is dead, and hinting that he may have been abusive at that, and finally, Amaro's father being declared not guilty and getting one last power trip on him, ending the episode with Amaro looking completely dead inside.
  • The really scary/tragic part about the conclusion of the episode is arguably the fact that Amaro's father is completely right about Nick letting his anger at his father get the better of him; Amaro Sr. wants Nick to lay it all out on the table over dinner, but Nick isn't having any of it since Amaro Sr. should have gone to jail. Amaro Sr. tells Nick that as long as he insists on keeping it bottled up, his temperament is just going to get worse and admits that that's exactly what happened between him and his own father, which is what led to him becoming the man he currently is. Amaro Sr. then tells Nick that he'll be there when Nick is ready. It may be hard for any of the viewers to admit that what Amaro Sr.'s saying is true, but anyone who's been in that situation or has been following the show since Stabler's time, (who is Nick's predecessor and with whom Nick shares many similarities with INCLUDING unresolved problems with his father) can probably testify as to the importance of the closure that Amaro Sr. is offering.
  • Then there's Alternative Character Interpretation that Amaro's father isn't truly offering closure, but rather is in the phase of the cycle of abuse in which the abuser apologizes and makes nice with the victim as a way of trying to keep the victim from completely breaking free. The younger Amaro's dead-eyed expression would then suggest he realizes on some level it's part of the cycle, and that for all his efforts to oppose or break away from his father, he will never truly be free of the man's psychological abuse.
• The entire plot of "Decaying Morality" (16.13). A young white girl, Jenna, claims that a young black man named Jerome raped her in the bathroom at the pizzeria that he worked. When SVU has to release him due to both lack of evidence and a previous gang-rape accusation against Jerome and two others that has also led to his involvement in a pending police harassment lawsuit, Jenna's father kidnaps and tortures him to try to force a rape confession from him, only to accidentally kill him instead when the beating triggers an ultimately fatal asthma attack. The SVU's further investigation reveals that Jerome really was innocent: Jenna was drugged before being raped and later consumed alcohol to try to make herself feel better. She was confused and nearly out of it when she named Jerome as her rapist, and only continued accusing him after his death to protect her father. The real rapist is eventually revealed to be her maternal uncle, an acclaimed dentist, philanthropist, and NYPD consultant, who turns out to be an utter Manipulative Bastard: he riled his brother-in-law up and persuaded him to go after the innocent suspect, then later convinced his sister that her daughter faked the attack after partying, and sent his niece to a therapist who convinced her that the police pressure made her think that he was her rapist. It also turns out, he has been a Serial Rapist since his days as a college freshman; he has raped, assaulted, and groped fellow students, his patients, his sister's friends, and her daughter's as well. His actions have ruined Jenna's family for at least the foreseeable future: the father will be sent to jail for at least three years and be forced to live with having killed an innocent man, the mother is left an emotional wreck by her brother's evil actions and her husband's incarceration, and Jenna will forever bear the scars of both her rape and her indirect role in Jerome's death. The ending has Barba is talking to the angry, racially charged mother and grandmother of Jerome, telling them Jenna's father will most likely get off easy because of the circumstances behind Jerome's death and Jenna's rape. They are understandably upset that, while the real rapist and the one who framed Jerome will still get significant jail time (likely for life should more victims come forward), their child/grandchild gets to be killed as collateral damage. Barba ends the show by saying that he wishes that Jerome hadn't been killed, but he can't change the past, as the women stare sadly at him.
• "Intimidation Game" (16.14): Rena Punjabi (a No Celebrities Were Harmed of Anita Sarkeesian) is so badly traumatized from being abducted, assaulted and raped by a group of misogynist assholes who hated her just for being a woman trying to make video games, that she decides to give up on creating games, saying that "they've won".
• The ending of "Undercover Mother" (16.15) has the titular mom finally being reunited with her previously abducted daughter, after three years of following her on a sex trafficking trail that started in Canada and then went across the Midwest before finally ending in New York.
• "December Solstice" (16.16). The case itself is sad, but even sadder is Barba's side-story, where he has to put his grandma in a nursing home. And then she dies in the very last scene. Esparza's acting is heartbreaking as he comforts his mother and can barely hold it together. And worse, he tells her it's all his fault for putting her in the home. Talk about being The Woobie!
• "Surrendering Noah" (16.23) Amaro gets serious about trying to become sergeant, only to be told he will never be higher ranked than he is now because of his actions during the previous season (shooting and crippling an unarmed black boy he had mistakenly believed had wounded a fellow officer, and beating up a pedophile for ogling at children on a playground while off-duty). He throws his study book away, and then later in the episode he gets shot in the liver and knee while shooting a perp who was opening fire in the courtroom. He lives, but has a serious knee injury that may never recover. He accepts that he has no future with the NYPD and decides to retire, in his thirties, and move to California to be with his son and daughter. The last scene has him and Olivia hugging and promising their friendship will last for life. As if he wasn't a big enough woobie already!
  Amaro: I know I wasn't what your old partner was for you.
  Benson: No, you weren't. I grew more in my last 4 years with you than I did in the 12 years that I was with him. You know, that relationship, whatever it was, didn't allow for anything else. But with you, with your support... I have a family.
  Amaro: Yes, you do.
  Benson: [whispers] You helped me grow.
  Amaro: I appreciate you saying that.
  
• "Institutional Fail" (17.04) is a heavy episode, full of child abuse and the failure of the system. Guest star Whoopi Goldberg delivers a heart-rending "The Reason You Suck" Speech when she's put on the stand. (Yes, it's ultimately a huge Never My Fault, but still.)
  I'm asked to do what the courts can't do. What the cops can't do...God himself could not do this job. You want to judge me? You wouldn't last an hour in my world. And if I go, who's gonna be on the front lines? You? You dump the most hapless cases on us every day. More and more, we get the dregs of humanity, children raised by wolves. And you see them come in this court, in and out, week in and week out, they come to you as criminals. Do you ever stop to think gee? What happened before that? ...It's impossible, and you all know it. But you want to scapegoat me... You want to pretend that there aren't poor people out there. Broken people. You don't turn away from the homeless guy on the subway? Of course you do, because it's too much. You want to put me in jail for this? Look in the mirror, my friend. Look in the damn mirror.
• "Maternal Instincts" (17.06) delivers a nasty blow to Rollins when her no-good sister Kim appears again, drugs a musician to steal his instrument for easy money and incidentally causes him to ruin his life when he unwittingly rape another woman, leading to his address. Rollins tries to cover for her at first, but has no choice but to bring her sister in and have her tried in court. On top of that, her own mother effectively shames her for choosing her police duty over her own family while refusing to acknowledge Kim has ever done anything wrong. And even worse, Kim's flirted up her own defense attorney to help get her out of punishment like a slap on the wrist. Effectively everything that could go wrong has, and Rollins ends up nearly collapsing in her pregnant state from the absurd amount of mental stress this inflicted on her.
• "Patrimonial Burden" (17.07), which is inspired by the Duggar controversy, features a thirteen year old girl from a religious reality TV family who is impregnated. The heart wrenching part is that the parents, who seem to only care about their reputation and their TV show, are completely genuine in their faith, despite not being infallible and subject to the same moral failings of any human being, and do love their children and their interests more than their fame. They finally have to confront their failure and the evil in the world when they realize that their pastor was not only the father of the thirteen year old's unborn child, but that he had previously abused one of the girl's older sisters and gotten her pregnant as well (the parents simply assumed she had a covert relationship and her baby was passed off as another one of her mother's many children). When the pastor is finally arrested, the look of heartbreak on the parents' faces (not to mention horror at the realization that they almost married off their daughter to her abuser) just makes you want to cry; the little girl, who initially was very committed to God and being a virgin, believe that what happened to her is holy and romantic. Remember that this is the SECOND one of the many daughters that were brainwashed by the priest.
  • Add to this the fact that this poor family that was considered very beloved to their community was able to have a lot of disturbing people get close to them. A pedophile priest was able to seduce and brainwash two of their girls and get them pregnant, their oldest son has mental issues that could turn him into possible sex offender, and the camera man who practically helped raise the kids was secretly filming the girls for who knows how long.
  • You also have to pity the poor son, Graham. Yes, he has gotten into trouble in the past for sexual misconduct and groping women who worked with his family, but it is not entirely his fault. He has issues and needed psychological help, but was instead sent away from the publicity to various Christian reform camps because his parents treated it like a spiritual problem. Not only that, his parents send him away again during the episode because they seriously think he raped and impregnated his two little sisters; he may have been lewd to them and mentioned inappropriate things in front of them, but he never actually assaulted any family members or did anything that would be remotely considered threatening. You can only imagine the trust issues the kid will have with his parents after they believed he was capable of incestuous rape. Not only that, it is also quite possible he feels guilty for not protecting his sisters.
• The opening of "41 Witnesses" (17.13) is hard to watch. A young woman is gang-raped in the courtyard of her apartment complex. Over half of her neighbors witness the act, yet NO ONE does a thing to help.
  • The case is based on the 1964 murder of Kitty Genovese, a young woman who was stabbed to death in the Kew Gardens section of Queens, New York, and her neighbors refused to intervene and call the police during the attack. Except that this case is arguably worse because in the Genovese case difficulties in contacting the police or even knowing how factored in, but nowadays we have 911.
• In "Star-Struck Victims" (17.16) Rollins swears up and down that she had nothing to do with leaking a video of her on an undercover sting trying to catch a famous actor accused of sexual assault in the act and pleads with Benson to believe her, but Benson refuses and berates her, telling her that she "thought things would change" and that she'd been trying to trust Rollins again but this had set that back. And then it turns out that Rollins is telling the truth– it was Sgt. Dodds who leaked the video to ensure that the actor (who had been acquitted at trial) got at least some kind of punishment for his crimes. Given that Rollins clearly looks up to Benson, it must have been devastating to realize that even after all this time and all she's done to try to prove herself, Benson still doesn't trust her and is already convinced of her guilt, knowing she's innocent but also knowing that there's no way to convince Benson of that. And based on a comment from the season finale, it doesn't seem like Benson apologized after learning she was wrong, or even told Rollins that she knew it wasn't her after all (since Rollins seems completely surprised to find out that someone else admitted to it).
• In "Sheltered Outcasts" (17.19), Carisi goes undercover as a sex offender in a sex offender rehabilitation center where he befriends Richie Caskey, an exemplary parolee who was arrested for raping a woman while blackout intoxicated at a baby shower 20 years prior and believing she was a prostitute. Recent rapes in the area lead Carisi and SVU to him as a suspect. Carisi sticks up for him the whole episode, but the evidence forces them to arrest Caskey. It turns out the real culprit is the lawyer working with the other offenders, as the police would be more likely to suspect them than him. At the end of the episode, Carisi apologizes to Caskey for suspecting a man who was just trying to make a second start. Caskey tells him that it isn't his fault. Because he's a sex offender, people will always be suspicious and distrustful of him, and there's nothing he can do about it, and he tells Carisi of everything he's lost because of one drunk mistake: he and his wife can't live together because her apartment is too close to a school and they can't afford to move, they can't travel because of his criminal record, and they opted to forgo having children despite both wanting them in order to spare them of the stigma of being a sex offender's offspring, being deprived of normal childhood experiences like playdates and sleepovers, and not having their father present at certain events and milestones (school plays, sports games, graduations, etc). With all the horrible monsters on this show, seeing a man genuinely trying to start over and be a better man, but being unable to do so due to no one being willing to look past or let him live down his past crime is quite heartwrenching.
• The ending of "Fashionable Crimes" (17.20) is this in hindsight, due to the passing of Munch's actor, Richard Belzer. It's his final appearance as the character, and it can be pretty gut-wrenching now to watch Munch say goodbye to Olivia and Noah before closing her apartment door behind him as the episode ends.
• The death of Mike Dodds in "Heartfelt Passages" (17.23). It's made infinitely worse by the very promising Hope Spot. Not to mention the tiny moment of Dodds Sr. completely breaking down in his son's hospital room when he tells Benson that Mike is essentially brain-dead.
  • Benson insists she's to blame because they didn't search the perp for a concealed weapon prior to her leaving Mike alone with him. As everyone affirms afterwards, all surrounding testimonies and evidence implied that there was no weapon on the premises, so one honest mistake ends up with fatal consequences and Dodds' death weighing on her from then on.

• The episode "Imposter" (18.03) where a woman sleeps with a man she thinks is the Dean of Admissions at a college her son is applying to so that he gets in, then reports him when she finds out he lied about his identity. She's neither the first woman he's tricked, nor the first woman who's slept with the dean, but all the others refuse to fess up in order to avoid the victim's fate — namely, having her reputation shot straight out the other end of hell, her husband filing for divorce, her son not being willing to look her in the eye, and so on. The detectives return to their house at the end of the episode and find the husband in the doorway, white as a sheet from horror. You might think his wife has taken her own life over everything that's happened, but nope: They make their way to the back of the house and find that the son has jumped to his death instead. The episode ends with the woman collapsing into Benson's arms, sobbing inconsolably.
• "The Newsroom" (18.16): In the final scene, Chief Dodds tells Benson he's been avoiding SVU for the past year because "Every time I walk in the place, I think I'm gonna see Mike sitting at his desk." It really hits the viewer with the fact that he's going to carry this incredible loss for the rest of his life, and will never be the same. And if that's not enough on its own, if you look at the title cards from both this episode and the Season 17 finale, this conversation occurs one year to the day after Mike was shot, meaning this conversation takes place within a day or two at most of the anniversary of Mike's death, if not on the actual date itself.
• "Real Fake News" (18.17): A Jerkass Conspiracy Theorist posts about a restaurant being a front for an underage girls trafficking ring online. The owner, employees and patrons, one of whom is a congressman, receive threats and even a man with a rifle storms in looking for the supposed girls. At the end of the episode, the congressman tries to help the restaurant's publicity by taking his daughter there for lunch, but another believer mistakes her for a teen prostitute and shoots him. The restaurant owner asks if this madness will ever end, but Liv can't give him an answer as the daughter cries over her father's dead body.

• "Intent" (19:08): Sonny finding out that Amanda hooked up with a guy the night after he attempted to declare his feelings for her. Peter Scanavino really makes his character look like a sad puppy in that scene.
• Olivia's entire situation in "Gone, Baby, Gone" (19.09). Noah has been kidnapped and the team has no idea where he could be. It's so heartbreaking to see someone as strong as Olivia be so helpless and break down in her office to Barba — and Barba's helpless, devastated compassion for her just makes it worse. He has no idea how to help her, and it's killing him. In the end, all he can do is just hold her.
  Barba: I don't know what to do. Um. Do you want coffee? Do you -
  Benson: (voice breaking) I just want my son back.
  • Sheila's betrayal. As Olivia says, she's a good woman, but she lost her chance to join Liv's family and be a grandmother when she gave into her desires to have Noah for herself.
• "Pathological" (19.10) has a young teen in a wheelchair with various symptoms having sex. During the investigation, it turns out her mother Dawn has had a major case of Münchausen Syndrome by proxy, making her sick constantly. At one point, she races to see her daughter Mariel in the hospital with the girl screaming on how her mother has made her life a living hell by keeping her ill all this time and hates her. She cries to her father and Rollins and how all she wanted was to feel "normal" but now realizes she has no idea what that's like thanks to the damage her mother has done. Things get even worse when, after her mother repeatedly violates court orders to stay away from her, Mariel snaps and kills her in a fit of rage. She is later taken to trial and is nearly convicted of murder (since she had continued to beat her mother's head in after initially incapacitating her), but Barba seemingly "accidentally" discusses that she could get a life sentence in front of several jurors, forcing the judge to declare a mistrial and allowing the case to be moved to family court, where the girl thankfully ends up getting a slap on the wrist.
• "The Undiscovered Country" (19.13). All of it. The case matter in of itself is an extremely emotionally draining and controversial topic but then there's also the fact it results in Barba resigning from the team.
  • Barba confesses to Olivia in a beautiful speech the depth that she changed his life, only to end it with telling her he needs to leave. The look on her face is devastating. Then he kisses her on the forehead before walking away, looking equally devastated.
  Barba: The world was an old movie. It was all black and white and it was high noon. I was Gary Cooper. I was absolutely sure absolutely who were the good guys, who were the bad guys. And then you, you started to weasel your way into my world, and the black and white became different shades of gray... Before I knew it, there were blues and greens and yellows and reds. I'm you now, Liv. You opened my heart. and I thank you for it.
  Olivia: And?
  Barba: I've got to move on.
• "Send In the Clowns," (19.17) an episode that began with a relatively routine case of a teen-aged girl disappearing on a spring break trip and being last seen with a Monster Clown — ends with several shocking revelations, namely, the father of a statutory rape victim learning from his wife that she had a secret affair 17 years earlier with the man that became their daughter Haley's music teacher, and then learning that from that earlier sexual liaison, came Haley, and learning all of that just mere minutes after learning about that Haley had been seduced by her music teacher. One would have to feel for the poor father, and one can only wonder how he'd react if he learned his daughter was an Ungrateful Bitch (she was shocked by learning that the man she slept with was her biological father, but so taken by him is happy, as she deep down resented her true father's blue collar background as a refuse collector). In any case, unable to make sense at this turn of events, he lunges at his daughter's assailant wanting to beat him to death, but is stopped and the two are separated.

• "The Book of Esther" (19.20) has Rollins helping a young woman who's clearly been starved and abused by her overly religious father. An attempt to help out causes a gunfight between the family and the cops where the woman is killed. Rollins is naturally rocked by it as she berates the father for what he's done. Then Benson has to break it to Rollins that the ballistics show it was Rollins who fired the fatal shot on the very girl she was trying to help. Her My God, What Have I Done? breakdown is truly heartbreaking.

• "A Story of More Woe" (20.13): After Carisi drives Rollins to the hospital when she goes into labor, he is an unwilling witness to Dr. Al's impromptu proposal. The camera deliberately cuts back to him to gauge his reaction, and it's blank and defeated.
• "Missing" (20.17); Emerson Mauer, a suspect in a kidnapping case, is revealed to actually be Kevin Brown, a boy who went missing when he was 7 years old. The real Emerson Mauer had died accidentally around the same time by falling down the stairs when his parents had a fight. Emerson's parents never reported his death to the police because they had both been drinking that night, and his father, Zach, had a criminal record. So his mother, Rowan, kidnapped Kevin and raised him as her son. During their confrontation with Rowan, Benson brings in Kevin's older sister, Diane, which leads to this.
  Rowan Mauer: What are you doing here? …I did you a favor. Your parents didn't care anything about either of you.
  Diane Brown: What are you talking about?
  Rowan Mauer: They let you run all over the city like a couple of ragamuffins. When you would come into the store to get ice cream, you were all alone. You were ten, he was six! What kind of mother does that?
  Diane Brown: (voice breaking) …One who was dying!
  Rowan Mauer: …Better yet… Kevin had a good life with me. I fed him, I clothed him, I loved him. He had a mom.
  Diane Brown: You stole him!
  Rowan Mauer: But my baby was dead! I deserved to have—
  Benson: No. No. No one. "Deserves". Somebody else's child.
  • The ending is even more gut-wrenching. Kevin is so disillusioned that he refuses to accept the truth of who he really is. Benson tries to reassure Diane that Kevin will come around, but Diane knows the truth. Kevin may be alive, but the little brother she knew has been gone for 17 years, and she's never getting him back.
    Diane Brown: He's not my brother anymore. He stopped being my brother years ago.
    Benson: This is just gonna take time.
    Diane Brown: We're people. We're not a broken vase you can put together with a little Krazy Glue.
    Benson: Diane…
    Diane Brown: Look, I know you think you're doing doing the right thing, Lieutenant, and maybe for someone else it would be... but I'm not that strong. (walks out, crying)

Season 21 and beyond

• "The Things We Have To Lose" (21.20) is quite a downer episode. One of the SVU's star witnesses against Sir Toby is shooting her credibility to shreds before the case can get underway (probably taking drugs from the trauma she endured); Fin kills a man who would've either killed his wife or his child and ends getting served by the surviving widow herself. Sir Toby himself keeps eluding court appearances by fraudulent heart attacks and the judge is too weak to enforce orderS for him to show up to court anyway. Another survivor dies from a beatdown from a different perp. It was an all around gloomy episode that served to really take a shit on the detectives' efforts.
• Benson is jarred at how Rita Calhoun, once a proudly liberal prosecutor, has not only switched to a defense attorney but defending men accused of rape. In "The Long Arm of the Witness," (22.06) Rita defends a judge who had spent years abusing his secretaries. After the man is found guilty, Olivia confronts Rita and asks point-blank how she can defend people like this.
  Rita: Read the room, Olivia. The way the courts are packed, Gallagher's side, these guys and women...The next thirty years, every appeal all the way to the Supreme Court...The fix is in.
  Olivia: That's why we keep fighting.
  Rita: Not if they won't let you in the ring. Olivia, you keep staying on the wrong side of this, you're gonna be marginalized for the rest of your career. My advice...Lie back and pretend you're enjoying it.
  • She walks out with Olivia rocked to see how a once proudly feminist woman has decided to simply give up rather than try to change things.
• Kathy Stabler's death in "Return of the Prodigal Son" (22.09). You can clearly see how devastated Elliot is, made worse by the fact he never got to say goodbye to her.
• The fates of Lonnie Liston and Ceranda Zajmi in "Welcome to the Pedo Motel" (22.10), two regular teens working at a pizzeria. However, Lonnie had an unfortunate past that was created by bigotry and unfortunate circumstances: several years before, he, a African-American was dating a white girl named McKenna Jensen; the two eventually consummated their relationship prior to Lonnie's 18th birthday. However, McKenna's racist stepfather Roy Eastman, a parole officer, was angered by this and pressed statutory rape charges against Lonnie shortly after he turned 18. Unable to afford a trial and fearful of Roy's connections, Lonnie pled guilty to avoid the maximum sentence and was imprisoned. He made parole after a year, though, and took up residence in a motel inhabited by other pedophiles and sex offenders that was hated by the neighborhood, and took the job at the pizzeria, while keeping his past record secret.
  • During this time, Lonnie remains in touch with McKenna secretly and the two make plans to run away together once the latter turned 17 (the age of consent in New York), after which Roy would have no grounds to interfere in their relationship. Roy, however, soon realizes their plans, and determined to keep them apart, conspires to send Lonnie back to prison: after learning of Lonnie's routines, he blackmails one of his parolees, Antonio Johnson, into sexually assaulting Ceranda and framing Lonnie for it by threatening to violate his parole and have him sent back to prison. Antonio then outsources the job to his half-brother Sam, who carries it out to protect him; however, while trying to rape Ceranda, she fights back and tries to scream for help, and Sam consequently hits her in the head with a brick, killing her.
  • Despite it not being what Roy had planned, her death ends up putting the SVU on Lonnie's trail. Even though Lonnie insists that he is innocent, he refuses to give an alibi for the time of the murder, and the detectives', especially Fin's, hostile, "guilty-until-proven-innocent" attitude due to his past record doesn't help matters. Meanwhile, the murder riles up the neighborhood against the sex-offender hotel, especially a white-supremacist based biker gang, who demand punishment against the hotel's residents.
  • Eventually though, Roy becomes impatient with the SVU not arresting Lonnie as fast as he hopes (as all evidence against him so far is circumstantial). Deciding to up the ante and get rid of Lonnie altogether, he takes matters into his own hands again by tipping off another gang of bikers in the neighborhood that Lonnie is Ceranda's killer and which apartment he lives in. As a result, the gang attacks the hotel, injuring most of the residents and murdering Lonnie by lynching and burning him alive, which the detectives, especially Fin, are horrified by.
  • Later, the SVU detectives speak to Lonnie's parents and learn of Roy's vendetta against their son. Even worse, it turns out Lonnie did have an alibi all along: he was meeting with McKenna at a train station when Ceranda was killed. But he feared that if he used it, he would go back to prison for violation of his parole. And as Fin puts it, the detectives' conclusion jumping and hostile attitudes towards him over his prior record only increased Lonnie's distrust of them. Lonnie's mother even notes in cruel irony that if he had told the detectives the truth, he might have lost his parole, but he at least would have lived.
  • Eventually, the SVU detectives find the Johnson brothers, make them talk and arrest Roy for facilitating both Lonnie and Ceranda's murders. As he is taken into custody, Roy defiantly states he was only trying to protect his stepdaughter and expresses confidence that he won't be convicted, but Carisi vows to punish Roy to the fullest extent of the law. The episode ends with the detectives assuring Lonnie and Ceranda's families at their joint memorial service that Roy will get the maximum sentence possible for his actions. Both families mourn the deaths of their respective children all because of one man's hate and racism.

• The ending of "Never Turn Your Back on Them" (23.02). The deal that Carisi and the U.S. Attorney made with Gold is dropped, Kat quits because she's lost hope that things can change in the NYPD, and Garland resigns before his reputation is completely ruined.

Other examples

• The real-life death of Richard Belzer, who played Munch, on February 19, 2023.