‘Law & Order: SVU’: Benson and Carisi Nail Corrupt Boss in Emotional Courtroom Moment That Has Us Cheering

Captain Olivia Benson and ADA Dominick “Sonny” Carisi are taking down a disgusting boys’ club in this week’s episode of Law & Order: SVU — and the corruption goes deeper than they ever would have expected. Spoiler-filled recap ahead for Law & Order: SVU – Season 26, Episode 11 “Deductible”.

We start the episode by meeting Kyra Thompson, she’s a young professional taking care of her 9-year-old brother Jake and really struggling to make ends meet. So when her boss, Frank Bailey, gives her the chance to pitch their insurance plan to this helicopter magnate Jim Hogan, she knows the pressure is on for her career and her family.

But here’s where things turn left: her boss gets a phone call from his wife at the start of the meeting saying his son had an allergic reaction to peanuts, and he makes a swift exit from the hotel suit — leaving Jim to be a total creep and come onto Kyra. Coincidence? I think not.

The next day, Kyra’s little brother goes to the police station because his sister didn’t come home the night before, and they find out she’s in the hospital with a head injury after being found locked in the bathroom of the hotel by housekeeping, Initially, Kyra admits yes she was assaulted, but she doesn’t want to get in trouble at work or press charges. That is until she gets flowers from Jim thanking her for a “great evening,” which pushes her over the edge when it comes to getting justice.

Jim denies he assaulted Kyra when police question him — he says it was a mutual encounter — and Kyra’s boss Frank also isn’t defending her. Frank points out that Kyra seemed pretty happy with her check for closing the deal, and Kyra is thrown when she receives an unexpectedly high commission. For Benson, it’s all starting to feel like part of a corrupt business plan with Frank as its leader.

Jim’s confession lends itself to that theory as well, because the businessman claims Frank basically offered Kyra up to him on a silver platter as a “sweetener” for the deal. Kyra also admits that Frank had even more power over her than Benson previously knew, revealing that she lost $2,000 of company money the prior year when she was helping get provisions for the office Christmas party. When she reported it to Frank, he implied that he wouldn’t turn her over for theft and fire her if she was able to close the deal with Jim.

OK, who called Frank about the peanut allergy, because that was totally a lie, right? Well, it turns out it was his COO Grace Callahan, and she’s not sorry at all, telling Benson that in a tough industry like sales, not many women can make it to the top like she has. Grace isn’t cooperating, so the detectives decide to track down other young women who left the company under duress — and their stories are very similar to Kyra’s.

With that, they can arrest Frank and charge him with coercion, but in court, his attorney is really disparaging all the women testifying against him for cashing the commission checks they were given after their own assaults. Carisi needs to nail this guy with something solid, so Benson tries to appeal to Grace again. She tells her she understands what it’s like to have come up as a woman in a male-dominated field — but even with all of the difficulties they conquered, they can now make things better for the next generation.

It was a powerful argument, and she’s Olivia Benson, so I’m not shocked Grace has a change of heart and decides to testify against her boss. And in the episode’s emotional courtroom scene, Grace reveals that Frank actually stole the $2,000 from Kyra at Christmas to get her under his thumb — which was the exact same thing had happened to her two decades ago.

Grace’s decision to speak out and set the record straight leads to Frank being found guilty on all charges — and while that only gets him a little bit over a year behind bars, Carisi is coming at him for perjury too, which comes with a maximum 15-year sentence. Benson points out that it’s bizarre the crime Frank committed gets less time than lying about the crime, but Carisi notes that no one promised justice would make mathematical sense. “You know what does make sense?” Benson asks as the episode comes to a close, “A controlling son of a b— like Frank Bailey doing 15 years in Green Haven [Correctional Facility].”

This article was adapted from the latest episode of PopCulture Social Call, streaming weekdays on PopCulture.com’s YouTube channel. You can now watch this episode, which is embedded in the above article.