Law & Order: SVU is like a car crash: you can’t look away and the violence is intense. We don’t know how many days we’ve wasted sitting in front of our TVs, eating pizza, and watching an SVU marathon, but we do know the crimes on SVU are brutal. To be honest, the worse the crime is, the more we want to watch. We don’t know why the most outlandish crimes appeal to us, but we’re not alone. Egghead studies have been written on the love affair between viewers and true crime, and the conclusions usually state that watching a series about serial rapists is a way to internalize and normalize something that’s really impossible to understand. And at the same time it’s wish fulfillment to see bad people get the justice they deserve when so few real human garbage monsters are caught and tried. We don’t want to over intellectualize our love for SVU; it is what it is. Just like this is a list of the worst crimes on Law & Order: Special Victims Unit.
For all its problems and Ice-T’s terrible acting (we’re very sorry Ice-T, but it's just not good), SVU is, at its center, a show that’s focused on real problems that women face – and there aren't a lot of those. At times SVU seems oddly focused on showing both sides of the story, even when the other side of the story is full of creepy misogyny, but at its heart it’s a show that feels like it’s doing some good. Also, when the show gets "extra super crazy go nuts awful," B.D. Wong magically appears and makes everything okay.
Vote up the worst crimes in Law and Order SVU history below and leave us a comment or two about what you love about the show.
http://www.ranker.com/list/worst-law-and-order-svu-crimes/jacob-shelton,
Billionaire Pedophile Molests Young Cancer Patient Being Used by Grandma for Charity Money
This episode has it all: a chatroom, a billionaire toy store owner/pedophile, and a cancer-stricken little girl who doesn’t actually have cancer. (Her grandmother’s been poisoning her with mercury in order to get charity money!!!) Oh, and the detectives don’t even catch the bad guy in the end. Sweet dreams!
A Psychic Rapes, Murders, and Buries a Girl Before Helping the Police Find Her Body
If you needed further proof to believe that anyone masquerading as a psychic is a total weirdo, just check out "Pure," from season six of SVU. Martin Short plays a psychic who helps police locate the bodies of missing women. We bet you'll never guess how he knows.
A Teenage Girl Is Raped by a Corrections Officer While in Prison
In "Undercover," Detective Benson goes, you'll never guess, undercover as a female prisoner to expose a ring of brutal prison guard rapes. This episode is not for the week of heart.
A Kindergarten Teacher Molests His Students with a Vibrating Egg
It's always interesting to see how Law & Order is going to jam a current media phenomenon into the show. In the case of "Dissonant Voices" the detectives investigate one of the judges from American Diva who may or may not be molesting kindergarteners with a vibrating egg.
A Girl's Friends Murder Her and Shove Her in a Trunk
When a teen girl is found decomposing in the trunk of a car the SVU crew pulls out all the stops for an investigation that leads them directly to the meanest clique on campus.
An Abortion Doctor Is Beaten to Death with a Hammer
After a night of heavy drinking, Dalton Rindell (what a name!) wakes up to a bloody apartment, a terrible cut on his head and a dead woman in his bed. The episode is a "fun" mystery with lots of twists and even a bonk on the head message about drinking. Why aren't you watching it right now?!
Underage Entrepreneur Uses His Eight-Year-Old Brother for Child Porn Ring
What do you do when you find an underage kid who runs and stars on his own child porn site along with his eight-year-old brother? Your guess is as good as any!
A Man Beats His Pregnant Wife to Death and Rips the Fetus from Her Womb
Before John Ritter passed away, he had a fantastic run playing bit part creeps on television, and no creep was creepier than Dr. Richard Manning. In "Monogamy," Dr. Manning beats his wife to death and tears the unborn child from her body via a primitive C-section.
A Juvenile Defendant Rapes a Woman, Steals Her from the Hospital, and Then Kills Her
After a rape victim is abducted from the hospital and later found murdered, the detectives discover that one of the multiple suspects is a psychopath with a juvenile conviction for rape, torture, and murder. Also, (and this is a pretty big also) the house in which the suspect is living belongs to an elderly woman who's been missing for quite some time. After being convicted he admits that he forgot where he put her body.
A Multiple Rapist Kidnaps a Girl And Begins Taunting The Cops Via A Video Game
When SVU does computer stuff, they sure have fun with it. In "Avatar," the detectives investigate the case of a young woman who goes missing after her younger sister was raped by her boyfriend. In a last ditch effort to find the missing sister, Detectives Benson and Stabler use her avatar from an online game that she was playing to find her. The outcome is incredibad on the scale of Lawnmower Man.