Tonight on NBC Law & Order SVU returns with an all-new Thursday, January 12, 2023 episode and we have your Law & Order SVU recap below. In tonight’s Law & Order SVU season 24 episode 11 “Soldier Up,” as per the NBC synopsis, “While Benson tries to help the gang member who attacked her.
Duarte reveals a shocking piece of evidence in the case. Fin is tasked with hiring new detectives for the Bronx SVU.”
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In tonight’s Law & Order SVU episode, Captain Olivia Benson had a member of BX9 in custody. He was more a kid than a soldier. His name was Fugazi. He was fifteen years old. He only joined BX9 because they raped his mother and threatened to do it again if he didn’t join their gang.
His mother hasn’t spoken to him since then. But Fugazi does need her. He knows neither he nor his family will ever be safe if he turns on the gang and so he wasn’t talking however Benson thought his mother’s inclusion in the discussion would at least reassure him that she was safe. Benson sent her people to go collect Fugazi’s mom. She then went on a little trip with Captain Duarte.
Duarte showed her the rape tree. It was a tree in the nearby park where BX9 put the underwear of the girls and women they raped. The tree was their trophy. Benson wanted to tear it down. Duarte warned her that even if she does it won’t change things. He had known about the tree for about a year to a year and a half.
He didn’t tell Bronx SVU about it because he wanted to get surveillance on the ground. But that’s now out the window. Benson knows about the tree now. She called in a forensics team. They were taking down each pair of underwear and testing it for DNA. She wanted to prosecute every rape.
Benson had to report this influx of a hundred cases. She reported it to her boss. He complained because he already had the FBI breathing down their necks because the Bronx SVU squad has been mishandled for years and then to make matters worse it turns out they hadn’t made the connection between rapes to the gang initiation.
Not even everyone on Duarte’s team knew about it. Detective Muncy didn’t know about the rape tree. She confronted Duarte after she saw it and he said he was playing things safe. But BX9 would approach kids at school. They tell them to join the gang and if they got turned down they would then rape a female relative of the person they wanted to add to their ranks.
This is what happened to Maria Garcia and her brother. Her brother was thirteen. He was good at school and loved playing with his cat. Then some recruiters saw him. They asked him to join. He said no. They then raped his sister and so he joined the next day. Gang violence was sexual violence.
The brother ended up getting killed during a gang war with a rival gang. Maria withdrew her complaint, but she remembers what happened and she was willing to identify her rapists to Muncy. Muncy was only allowed to use the information as long as Maria didn’t get called to testify. Maria never told her parents what happened. And she wanted them to keep thinking her brother was a good kid.
Maria identified Lindsey Del Toro and Hector Suarez as her rapists. They were known as Bug and Sacrilege. They were the BX9 “recruiters”. They were arrested and while one lawyered up – the other started talking. They weren’t getting much from him but it must have gotten out that they were getting closer to the boss because he reached out to them. Oscar Papa went to Mara’s family’s restaurant. He roughed up Maria. He had her call, Muncy. Muncy was busy because she had reunited Fugazi with his mother and was transporting him to safety when she got the call. And so she told her captain about it.
Benson was with Duarte. They both decided to check on Maria together. They went to the restaurant and they found Oscar waiting for them. Oscar apparently wanted to talk. He said he knew nothing about the tree. He called the rape tree an embarrassment. He also said he had nothing to do with the rapes. He was just a businessman. He said he started BX9 in high school because he wanted to start a brotherhood for south and central Latino Americans. He even said that the rapists that forced people to join will be dealt with. And he allowed Duarte and Benson to walk out of there after he said that.
It turns out old Oscar would go on to have the talking rapist murdered in prison. Which frightened the other one into silence. Oscar was tying up loose ends and if he was scaring people like Maria into doing his bidding – it meant no one else was safe. The only person the cops could turn to in that situation was Fugazi. He was reunited with his mom. He admitted to her that it was maestro was the one who made him do it. The one who told him to go after Benson. This maestro was later identified as Oscar’s driver, Benny. The guy was so smart that he recorded Oscar each and every time he was in the car on the phone and so he was willing to testify against Oscar in exchange for protection.
And that proved to be the downfall of Oscar Papa. He was arrested for rape and the attempted murder on Benson.
And Detective Bruno later welcomed the new member of Bronx SVU.
THE END!