‘Law & Order: SVU’: Cassidy Reveals He’s a Sex Crime Victim

A lot of screen time of Wednesday night’s Law & Order: Special Victims Unit episode was dedicated to Brian Cassidy (Dean Winters), and it all built to a shocking reveal.

Cassidy blows up in court when testifying about a doctor accused of molesting children. His outburst, which implies major bias towards the accused, triggers a mistrial and puts the entire case in jeopardy. The doctor soon turns up dead, and Cassidy is the prime suspect.

Through the investigation, the DA investigator is adamant that he did not commit the slaying. However, he does admit he was still incredibly fired up about the case. He went to the victims house where he was then knocked unconscious. When he awoke, the doctor was dead.

The story turns out to be true, but it is still unclear why Cassidy would put his career on the line for this particular case.

At the end of the episode, Cassidy meets with attorney Peter Stone (Philip Winchester) to plead for him to take it easy on the real killer, who is one of the doctor’s victims.

“This kid is gonna be chasing demons away for the rest of his life,” Cassidy says. “Every relationship, every time this kid looks into a mirror, there’s gonna be this looming shadow that…”

Stone realizes that Cassidy is inferring that he, too, was molested as a child.

“Olivia didn’t tell me,” Stone says.

Cassidy replies, “Olivia doesn’t know. That’s why I left all those years ago. I just couldn’t handle SVU.”

The DA investigator then details the sex crime that was committed against him by a baseball coach.

“It was my little league coach,” Cassidy says. “The truth is, it only went on for a couple months, and then my father found out and beat the crap out of the guy.”

Cassidy then departs, and runs into Olivia. He does not reveal what happened to her.

Law & Order: Special Victims Unit airs Wednesdays at 9 p.m. ET on NBC.