When a young boy is found raped and murdered in a field, suspicion leads detectives to a recently paroled child molester who lives in the neighborhood.. Although they both hate what the man has done in the past, it is soon obvious to the detectives that the teenagers who initially steered them in the man's direction are hiding secrets of their own.

A moral coalition leader’s gay son is found murdered on the roof of his apartment building. Initially, Benson and Stabler investigate his father, a Conservative well-known for his homophobic viewpoints, but once they start looking into the young man's living arrangements they realize the person they're looking for may be closer than they think. Munch tries to help Benson find the man who raped her mother, and could potentially be her father.

The case of a seventeen-year-old rape victim during a gala for the opening of a luxury hotel takes a strange turn when her immediate family tries to keep the scandal quiet. Detectives soon discover that the girl isn't the innocent that she pretends to be. Benson struggles to deal with her mother's death and she learns about her past.

A public health doctor, the wife of a retired attorney, who tracked HIV cases is found murdered and raped in Central Park. Her work involved contacting sexual partners of HIV patients which gives the detectives a long list of suspects and the detectives try to link threatening phone calls to the crime. The discovery of a second body in Central Park with the same signature shifts the focus to a possible serial killer.