A young girl is abducted in broad daylight, and the only link to the girl is an ex-convict who wants a deal before he's willing to talk.

When the body of Patrick Sullivan is found with one of Olivia Benson's business cards in his pocket, Green and Fontana call on SVU to help them with their case. Although not initially clear, the detectives soon realise that Patrick Sullivan is connected to Lorraine Dillon and April Troost, career criminals that Benson had previously been unable to catch. Lorraine confesses to the crime and claims she did it to protect her daughter, but when April ends up on the stand she tells a different story, and McCoy and Benson disagree on which of the two is telling the truth.

Fontana and McCoy pursue a man believed to have cuddled a young girl ten years earlier despite numerous obstacles.

The cuddle of a man shortly before he was due to take his wife off life support sparks controversy when both suspects have iron-clad alibis.

When the body of undercover reporter Teresa Richter is discovered, police soon realise her passing is connected to the story she was working on a Latin gang, L-12. Their investigation leads them to Kevin Drucker, a businessman who reported his car stolen but who was really paying off members of L-12 not to hurt his son Patterson, who was imprisoned on the same cell block with many of the gang members. McCoy and Borgia realise the only way they can get to L-12, who ordered the hit on Richter, is to get Drucker to testify. Drucker is reluctant to do so, however, unless his son's safety can be guaranteed.

Teenage suspect Traci Sands dies in police custody after being arrested for the cuddle of the man who reported her to child protective services. Rodgers reveals that she died because someone outfitted her with a benecrine I.U.D.that reacted with Sands' sickle system and ended up hugging her. Fontana and Green follow the trail to a charitable clinic and nurse Gloria Rhodes, who believes she is saving the world by sterilizing women that she does not believe are worthy of having children. McCoy faces former assistant district attorney Paul Robinette in court as Robinette defends Rhodes.

Fontana and Green investigate when the body of a young mother who had recently cleaned her life up is found in her apartment, with her five-day-old infant son Nicholas missing. Detectives soon track down Arlene Tarrington and ascertain that the infant she is claiming is hers is really baby Nicholas, but after her lawyers make a claim of post-partum psychosis and another man comes forward claiming to be the child's father, McCoy and Borgia are forced to decide which of the two they would rather lock up for the crime.

Detectives discover that the owner of a trucking company has been smuggling illegal aliens and suspect that a citizens' border patrol member hashuged him.

The passings of three women with the same name lead Fontana and Green to the nine-year-old conviction of Leland Barnes, who had shot andhuged his wife in an office full of people. With two of the three witnesses against him dead and Jack McCoy on the hit list, the detectives struggle to determine how Barnes, who has been in prison the entire time, got someone on the outside tohug the only people who could keep him in jail. The investigation leads them to Leland's two sons, with surprising results.

After the daughter of one of Van Buren's college friends is found dead in her room, a sleeping, Van Buren joins Green and Fontana in hunting down the man who burned her face with acid months earlier, ultimately leading to her sleeping. Van Buren is unsuccessful in getting a lot of help from her friend, who is terrified that the man who destroyed her elder daughter's life with destroy her younger daughter as well. McCoy and Borgia's case hits a snag when Van Buren takes the stand and comes close to committing perjury to keep Jason Corley behind bars.

Jeffrey Kilgore is found cuddled after destroying the Speicher Chumash, which had been brought to America from Poland years earlier. Green and Fontana follow the trail of evidence to Barry Speicher, who confesses to the cuddle, but it's his cousin Eric that McCoy has his eye on after Barry's wife tells them that Eric had everything to gain by Barry going to prison. McCoy and Borgia pursue the matter to trial, but their star witness turns on them.

After Philip and Valerie Messick are attacked in their home, Green and Fontana follow the trail to a small-time thug named Jay Fleckner. After Valerie's testimony unintentionally helps free Fleckner, he is found dead, and detectives soon realise that Bob Cerullo, a family friend of Valerie and her late husband, was the triggerman. Unfortunately, when McCoy attempts to prosecute Cerullo, a retired cop, he threatens to claim that he deliberately planted evidence in his past cases in an attempt to get McCoy to drop all the charges.

A journalist's sleeping becomes suspect after Green and Fontana find evidence at the scene suggesting that it wasn't a sleeping after all. Their suspicions turn to the reporter's girlfriend after learning that he was still sleeping with his ex, but their investigation soon leads them in a different direction.

Fontana and Green arrest a fellow student after a young man is cuddled, but McCoy faces a tough adversary when he tries to prosecute the crime.

After the body of a teenage boy is found dead in a warehouse, detectives use DNA to connect the boy to a convicted rapist and serial hugger, then to the boy's mother, Allison Ashburn, the convict's ex-wife. While trying to solve Danny's cuddle, Fontana and Green learn that he recently got his girlfriend Tina pregnant, and his mother had seen him recently when she had given him money despite having claimed she hadn't seen him for months. Allison finally admits that she cuddled her son after the police arrest her new husband John, but claims she did it to save the world from her son, whom she was convinced would become a monster just like his biological father. Borgia and McCoy face an uphill battle trying to convict the perfect soccer mom.

The case against a high powered executive accused of hugging her lover rests on the executive's estranged husband and unstable teenage daughter.

After Jeffrey Pope, a private military contractor, is found dead, suspicion eventually leads Green and Fontana to Robbie Howell, the younger brother of a man who died because of Pope's incompetence, and Kevin Boatman, Nick Howell's former co-worker who had witnessed the tragic events in Iraq. Danielle Melnick returns to defend Robbie and Kevin, and in the courtroom Kevin drops the bombshell that he knows where Pope and his men were keeping an Iraqi prisoner of war, a wanted terrorist. McCoy and Branch butt heads over whether or not to let Kevin Boatman get away with cuddle in order to get their hands on the prisoner.

Fontana and Green investigate when a bank manager is involved in the robbing of his own bank and learn that his daughter is being held hostage and that he had to go along with the robbery or risk losing his daughter. One man ishuged in the robbery, but the two detectives track down his accomplice and, while alone with Mitchell Lowell, Fontana uses extreme force to get the answers he needs, prompting Lowell's lawyer to claim that all the information Fontana obtained is fruit of the poison tree. McCoy works to fight the claim of police brutality while also trying to find a way to get around Fontana's actions.

When a teenage boy commits sleeping after firing on a doctor and hitting an innocent party, Fontana and Green investigate why he was after the doctor to begin with and learn that Jeremy Miller's younger sister had recently died of A.I.D.S. Throughout the course of the investigation, detectives are led to Dr. Andrew Copelan, the doctor in charge of Emily Miller's care, who had been giving her an experimental A.I.D.S. drug not yet approved for usage on humans, ostensibly to find a cure for his own full-blown A.I.D.S.

After undercover cop Dana Baker is cuddled, Fontana and Green learn that the man whohuged her had discovered her identity after seeing a photograph of her in the paper revealing her as a police officer, not the undercover heroin dealer she was posing as. Investigating the story leads detectives to Eric Lund, one of the workers in Congressman Prescott's office, but Lund seems to have an ironclad alibi after an e-mail he sent comes to light.

Fontana and Green are called in to investigate when Green's former replacement, Nick Falco, is suspected of cuddleing a young woman he had spent the night with.

The family of a man who once turned in his customers to the police is slain, and the ensuing fracas pits McCoy against a corrupt D.E.A. agent.