Law & Order: SVU Season 26 Sets Up ADA Carisi's Most Important Arc Yet

Warning! Spoilers ahead for Law & Order: SVU Season 26, Episode 4.Law & Order: SVU season 26, episode 4 set up an important arc for ADA Sonny Carisi. Although the series is a police procedural, its mission is to empower survivors and shed light on issues related to trauma. Some of the best episodes of Law & Order: SVU have accomplished this goal by allowing the detectives to experience traumatic situations themselves. However, these storylines mostly fell to Benson and Rollins, while ADA Carisi was not one of the characters who dealt with this issue in his personal life.




Carisi originally joined the series as a new cop working in the SVU squad room, but has been the ADA in charge of prosecuting special victims cases for several years. He has participated in some of Law & Order: SVU‘s saddest cases as both a cop and a lawyer without getting emotionally involved, instead focusing on what needed to be accomplished to successfully prove the perps guilty. However, after a cold case involving child molestation, there was widespread speculation that Carisi would have a harder time than before.


Carisi’s Reaction To A Pedophile In Law & Order: SVU Season 26, Episode 4 Explained

He Acted Quickly To Protect His Daughter


Carisi confronted a pedophile that was leering at Jessie as they walked down a street, but it may have been about more than that one incident. Carisi had taken Jessie to get a phone so that she could stay in touch with Rollins while Rollins was out of town, but as they walked down the street, he noticed a man staring at her. He thus told Jessie to wait for him at a nearby corner and confronted the man, demanding his ID and telling him to stay away from his daughter.

Carisi is not Jessie’s biological father, but he considers the two girls that Rollins had with other men to be his daughters.

Carisi’s decision to confront the pedophile was risky. It could have escalated quickly into violence; additionally, leaving his young daughter alone on a street corner made her vulnerable to other predators, as his back was turned, and he was not paying attention to anyone else who might approach her. However, from Carisi’s perspective, it was worth the risk to stand up to a pedophile without alerting Jessie about what was wrong so that he didn’t unduly scare her.


Why Carisi’s Possible Vicarious Trauma Is Manifesting Now

Becoming A Father Has Made Him Hyperaware Of Evil Toward Children

Carisi’s desire to protect Jessie might not have stemmed solely from this one incident. After all his years working on cases involving horrible crimes against vulnerable people, he might have vicarious trauma, a condition in which a person who is helping trauma survivors experiences the same emotional difficulties as the people who went through the incident. This type of mental health issue is a risk for anyone who is helping trauma survivors, and is likely part of the reason that Benson became so attached to Maddie Flynn in season 25.


A collage of characters in Law and Order SVU

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Carisi has not often gotten attached to the work he is doing like Benson does, but now that he is a father to Rollins’ three children, his perspective has changed. He has become more aware of the dangers the world holds for his young children, especially the girls, and wants them to escape the fates that have befallen so many of the girls and women he has worked with. Additionally, Carisi recently prosecuted a cold case in which a powerful judge had begun molesting his daughter when she was eight years old, only a year younger than Jessie.

Carisi’s Law & Order: SVU Season 26 Trauma Storyline Offers Support and Visibility To Male Trauma Survivors

Male Survivors Need To Know They Are Not Alone

Law & Order: SVU Season 26 Team Including Juliana Aiden Martinez


Carisi’s vicarious storyline is important because it offers support and visibility to men who might be going through something similar. Although Law & Order: SVU is meant to help all survivors, regardless of gender identity, the series still features far more cisgender female survivors than other demographics, but Carisi’s story can help change that. This is important because of cultural and social attitudes that often keep male survivors trapped in silence and shame.

Although his [Carisi’s] arc is about vicarious trauma, it will allow

Law & Order: SVU

to depict issues important to male survivors, expanding the series’ already-robust commitment to supporting trauma survivors.


A role model like Carisi, who has a powerful job, a happy marriage, and the ability to function well in most spheres of his life, can help these survivors see that dealing with emotional trauma is not a threat to their masculinity. Now that the Law & Order: SVU season 26 cast includes more than enough detectives, the series has room to explore issues in more depth. Although Carisi’s arc is about vicarious trauma, it will allow Law & Order: SVU to depict issues important to male survivors, expanding the series’ already-robust commitment to supporting trauma survivors.