Benson and Stabler have trouble identifying a male murder victim in his 20's found in a pile of sheets in the West Village; they later suspect an outspoken minister who was in the process of flooding the victim with hate mail and death threats. When the activist's alibi checks out, the detectives turn their attention to a professor who objects to the victim's thesis on the failure of sexual re-education groups.

As Benson and Stabler investigate the disappearance of a mother and her teenaged daughter, they uncover a conspiracy between a corrupt immigration attorney and gangsters running a prostitution ring that is staffed by women they have smuggled into the country and imprisoned as sex slaves.

A career con artist, forger and thief turns to murder and serial pedophilia to populate the cult he created and to get his hands on a multi-million dollar trust fund. The detectives have trouble getting any leads because no one in the cult is saying anything, not even their names.

After a young woman's baby is tossed out of a car, Benson and Stabler investigate to find out what happened, and after learning the young woman is addicted to prescription pain killers, their investigation leads them to an elderly woman named Jenny Rogers, who lives with her son Kevin and daughter-in-law Carol. The young woman finally identifies Carol Rogers as the person who solds her the drugs, but when detectives go to confront Carol they find her body, and are left trying to uncover who really killed Carol.

After sixteen-year-old Lauren Westley loses her unborn child due to a severe abdominal beating, her father's insistence that Lauren was raped leads detectives to the baby's father, but it isn't long before the detectives realise that Lauren was an active party in her own beating, and the two teens had found it necessary to take the steps they did because the abortion clinic kept putting off Lauren's request for an appointment. Novak faces a tough opponent in her own office when she and Branch disagree over the appropriate action to be taken against Wayne Mortens, the young girl's boyfriend.

A woman's murder appears to be the result of a professional hit, when her fiancé receives death threats, apparently resulting from his CIA career. Elliot, investigating this, finds that the man may not be all that he seems.

The only witness to a young woman's horrific beating is her mentally challenged daughter.

After a woman was found raped in a garden, Benson and Stabler realize that the case goes much deeper because of the victim's mother, drugs, and the realization that a corrections officer is involved. Benson decides to go undercover at the same prison where the mother is, putting herself on the other side of the fence.

A beaten and raped woman who has no memory of what happened to her puts Benson and Stabler on the trail of a serial rapist, but when women refuse to testify Olivia will have to face how her assault has affected her job performance.

Soon after a young girl, Laine McAlister, is raped in her apartment building's stairwell, Detectives Olivia Benson and Eliot Stabler meet Laine in the hospital and find her extremely shaken with a large cut on her hand. After an unpleasant exchange with a man she claims is her boyfriend, the detectives become suspicious that she may have fabricated her rape to get attention. Their suspicions grow when she waits to reveal that there was an eyewitness. As the gravity of the situation intensifies, Benson and Stabler find themselves in a race to track down the witness and get a testimony before it is too late.

The brutal rape of a ten-year-old girl leaves her unable to recall her own name. Unfortunately, once Fin assists with the ID, the detectives find that she’s not the only one with memory impairment, and Dr. Huang is brought in to assess her home situation.

A closed rape case of Benson's is reopened because of it's similarities to a new case, and the possibility of wrongful imprisonment surfaces. As Benson's work is questioned, tension develops between her, ADA Haden, and Bayard Ellis.