Law & Order: Special Victims Unit (season 8)

A young woman, Haley Kerns (Kristen Bush), shows up at a hospital emergency room beaten and with her head shaved. Despite signs of sexual assault, she demands only a morning-after pill and refuses a rape kit. Kerns is accosted on the street by Benson, who pleads with her to submit to the rape kit. Benson follows Kerns back to her apartment but is asked to leave when Kerns locks herself in the bathroom. Benson does so, but not before taking Kerns' soiled underwear from her assault for a DNA analysis. When she returns to Kerns' apartment, she finds the woman missing and encounters Agent Dana Lewis (from season 7's "Raw," played by Marcia Gay Harden), who reveals that Kerns is her confidential informant on an eco-terrorism investigation. After Stabler is wounded while following a lead on Kerns' whereabouts, Benson and Lewis must find Kerns and get her to cooperate in preventing a terrorist bombing.

• Ebon Moss-Bachrach also guest stars. 

Stabler and Tutuola team up to investigate when a teenage boy, Connor Wesley (Daniel Farcher) and a teenage girl, Janey Speer (Betsy Hogg) go missing on a school field trip to a museum. The case takes a different turn however, when they realize Janey has Turner's syndrome so she looks twelve even though she's seventeen. When the missing boy is found the team wonders if they were even missing in the first place. Connie Nielsen is introduced at the end of this episode as Stabler's new partner, Det. Dani Beck.

• Gregory Harrison, Deborah Raffin, Robert Vaughn, Larry Pine, Jason Butler Harner, and Betty Buckley guest star. 

Stabler and Cragen have concerns about Beck's reputation as an overzealous investigator. She works with Stabler on a vexing rape case in which they are unable to make the charges stick until a surprise witness (Leslie Caron) comes forward.

• Charles Shaughnessy, James Naughton, Robin Weigert, and Lily Rabe guest star. 

Stabler and Beck disagree on how to handle a case in which the attacker seems to be coming back to rape his victims again and again. They soon discover the rapist has a much more deviant plan that anybody thought and Beck gets in over her head when she attacks the man she believes to be responsible for the crimes.

• Mariette Hartley, Michael Kelly, Patricia Kalember, Marin Ireland, and Matthew Arkin guest star. 

Casey Novak is forced to get Benson, still undercover with the FBI, to come back to New York to testify in a rape case. While undercover with an Oregon environmental group, Benson is injured by an overzealous deputy sheriff and charged with assault. She is eventually released but is questioned about her group's involvement with a murder. She then sets out to clear her group's name and finds that the murdered man was a pedophile. She finds a room under his garage and discovers the murder scene. The local sheriff finds two sets of prints at the scene, the murdered man's and those of a ten year old girl who went missing seven years ago. Benson is then released from the FBI (it turns out that the group she had infiltrated had nothing to do with terrorism; the actual terrorist leader had been arrested two days ago) to go back to New York. As she is still unaware of the urgency of Novak's case, she decides to stay and help the FBI find the missing girl. In the end Benson finds the girl, who had developed Stockholm syndrome. Benson just makes it back to New York in time to testify.

• Vincent Spano, Debra Jo Rupp, and Charles Martin Smith guest star. 

Three teenaged homicide victims with matching tattoos lead Detectives Stabler and Beck to an underage prostitution ring. With the victims' pimp, Victor Bodine (Michael K. Williams), as the prime suspect, detectives must rely on one of his young girls Belinda "Passion" Holt (Charlie Ray), to testify against him. Also, Benson's jealousy flares when she quietly returns to the squad room and witnesses an intimate moment between Stabler and Beck (she does not, however, witness a kiss between Stabler and Beck after a round of drinks with Novak). Benson then tells Capt. Cragen that she is not ready to come back to SVU, and leaves without saying hello to Stabler.

• Joe Grifasi, Victor Slezak, and Julito McCullum also guest star. 

Detectives Stabler and Beck investigate a car accident involving two foster children. The accident leads the detectives to the foster parents and some questionable medical practices involving controversial "rebirthing" therapy. As the detectives dig deeper into the case, they discover other gruesome secrets involving the children, and after one of the foster children, Eden (Elle Fanning) sets the drapes in Beck's living room on fire, attempting to murder Beck and commit suicide, Beck says goodbye to Stabler and Special Victims Unit.

• Ken Howard, Margo Martindale and Leo Burmester guest star. 

Stabler agrees to hear the dying confession of a cancer patient named Judson Tierney (Brian Dennehy), but first he and Benson do some digging into what possible crime Tierney could be guilty of and come up with an unsolved case that goes back 47 years. Tierney is later found responsible for 21 armed bank robberies, murder, and kidnapping. Tierney's daughter, Sheila (Paget Brewster) refuses to see him in his last days, but as he lays dying she goes to his bedside.

• John Doman and Judith Light guest star. 

Fin looks into an alleged rape at the college where his son, Ken (Ernest Waddell), attends. Fin is joined in his investigation by a Brooklyn SVU detective named Chester Lake (Adam Beach), who is working a strikingly similar case.

• Kal Penn, Sakina Jaffrey, and Kelli Giddish guest star. 

An anonymous letter leads to an apparent child-pornography case and the testing of pesticides on unwitting apartment tenants. Olivia is also exposed to the pesticide and develops medical symptoms similar to those exhibited by the victim and his mother. The latter part of the episode explains a controversial United States Environmental Protection Agency rule that allows intentional dosing of human beings in pesticide experiments.^[1][2]

• Casey Siemaszko, Wayne Duvall, Peter Riegert, Karen Olivo, Bill Goldberg, James Naughton, and Ray Wise guest star 

After a mob lawyer (Cary Elwes) is attacked and his wife brutally murdered, Benson and Stabler question their daughter (Emily VanCamp), but her wild night of drunken partying leaves her unable to recall her actions, even though her father insists she was at the scene of the crime. Stabler is charged with excessive force when the daughter's boyfriend (Justin Klosky) dies in his custody.

• Seamus Davey-Fitzpatrick also guest stars. 

In a "ripped-from-the-headlines" episode, overzealous reporter Cindy Marino (Kali Rocha) accuses new mother Laura Kozowloski (Ashley Williams) on television of kidnapping and trying to kill her baby. That's the last straw for the despondent woman, who promptly commits suicide. Although everyone is under suspicion, including the mother and her ex-husband, Dan (Pablo Schreiber), the case takes an unusual emotional toll on Detective Stabler who is drawn in on the mother and her past.

• Marian Seldes, Judith Light, and Dana Ashbrook guest star. 

Benson investigates a rape case outside her jurisdiction and must meet with Dr. Rebecca Hendrix (Mary Stuart Masterson) to discuss her recent actions which have compromised her performance. Also, Benson finally unravels a part of her past when she finds her brother Simon Marsden (Michael Weston) who may be a rapist. In one of the rare episodes that actually acknowledge adult male-on-male rape, the detectives struggle to move forward on a case where all four male victims refuse to cooperate to bring the rapists to trial.

• Kim Delaney guest stars. 

A successful preacher (Tim Daly) is the prime suspect in a murder case, until his wife (Kathy Baker) provides detectives with a taped conversation.

• John Cullum also guest stars. 

Stabler and Benson are forced to dive in to the world of underage drinking when a death leads to high school binge parties and a mother (Laura Leighton) who not only supplies booze to her daughter (Sarah Drew)'s friends but sleeps with those friends as well.

• Judith Light, Hunter Parrish and Leven Rambin also guest star. 

When Detective Benson gets into the middle of an investigation of her brother Simon Marsden (Michael Weston), the case begins to threaten her career. As Simon makes a run for it, Benson investigates further into his family life, and begins to question whether or not she was the product of a rape in the first place. She digs deeper to discover that Simon was the victim of a frame-job by Capt. Julia Milfield (Kim Delaney).

• Josh Casaubon, Vincent Spano, and Frankie Faison also guest star. 

In the season 8 finale, Darius Parker (Chris "Ludacris" Bridges), goes on trial for the rape and murder of a woman and her 14-month old child. The case brings Fin under fire from the media and even has Munch and Stabler at odds. Novak prosecutes the trial that brings Stabler and Tutuola, among others, to the stand. Many previous stories are brought into the trial, such as Stabler's daughter Kathleen's DUI, and Benson's illegal money-wiring to her half-brother, Simon Marsden (Michael Weston). It is also revealed that Kathy Stabler, Elliot's wife, is pregnant again.