Tonight on NBC Law & Order SVU returns with an all-new Thursday, March 13, 2025 episode and we have your Law & Order SVU recap below.
In tonight’s Law & Order SVU season 26 episode 15 “Undertow,” as per the NBC synopsis, “A complicated case of sex and drug use divides the squad. Carisi must convince a jury to focus on the law and not the defendant’s accusations..”
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Billy Moran thought he was doing a great thing. He took his wife on vacation. It was their anniversary. They also haven’t done anything big in a while and so the night was supposed to be one of celebration. It didn’t turn sour until he started drinking. He was clean for a full six months before that night. He was a different person when he was drunk and this time he intentionally fell off the wagon. He ordered the alcohol at the restaurant. He drank to excess. He started getting grabby and so his wife couldn’t deal with it. Stacey wanted to escape a rapey husband.
Stacey left her husband in the suite by himself. She went back down to the bar. She began drinking. She ran into Ryan. Ryan claimed he was there for a wedding and that he just had to get away. He was drinking too by then. He had several beers. Both of them got pretty drunk. Ryan convinced Stacey to go skinny dipping in the hotel’s pool. Things progressed from there and they slept together. It seemed consensual at first. It was only revealed to be sexual assault when Ryan was proven to be sixteen. It was statutory rape to sleep someone under the age of seventeen in the state of New York.
His stepmother found Stacey’s underwear in his jacket pocket. She was doing laundry and it fell out. She got Ryan to tell her everything. She found out he slept with an adult. She knew it was crime. She took him down to SVU to report it and she was more gung-ho about this than Ryan was. Ryan was initially reluctant to talk to the cops. He didn’t see it as rape. He was illegally drinking that night. Stacey never got his age nor did he tell her. He knew she assumed he was an adult and the cops told him that assumption doesn’t mean much.
Ryan told the cops that he slept with woman named Stacey. They went to the hotel. They found the bartender that was serving them that night and they got him to talk before he too was charged. He gave them security footage as well as the receipt from the bar. The cops identified Stacey Moran as their perp. They tracked her back to her home. They spoke with her, but her husband was also there and that made things complicated because Stacey was claiming she blacked out that night. She had no memory of sleeping with someone.
When Stacey told her husband that, he’s the one that said she was sexually assaulted. He also called his brother for help. His brother was a lawyer and he knew Stacey was going to need a lawyer. Stacey’s story eventually changed. She claimed she didn’t black out after all. She said Ryan gave her a vodka bottle and that she felt uninhibited afterwards. She would never have gone near him if she knew he was underage. She was a teacher. She could lose her license if she’s found guilty of statutory rape.
Stacey’s lawyer/brother-in-law demanded a tox screen. The tox screen could keep her off the sex offender registry. Which Ryan’s parents didn’t like. His parents were pushing for charges against Stacey. His stepmother refused to believe that Ryan could have drugged this woman. She still was calling Stacey a pedophile even after the tox screen came back. Stacey had MDMA in her system. She doesn’t take drugs because again she’s a teacher. She gets randomly drug tested all the time and she had no come up dirty before.
The cops then got a warrant to search Ryan’s room. They found MDMA pills in his room. He got arrested for drug possession and naturally he blamed his stepmother for his arrest. She hasn’t even been his stepmother for long. It was his parents’ wedding that he was attending that night. His biological mother died when he was a toddler. Emily was his second stepmother at sixteen and so he found it easy to blame her for everything. Ryan later admitted that he crushed up some MDMA to put in his vodka.
Ryan said he that for personal use. Stacey drank from the bottle when he wasn’t looking. He didn’t intend to drug her. He only planned it for himself. He also planned on sleeping with an older woman that night. The cops read his text messages. Ryan told his friends that he was going to try to sleep with one of his new stepmother’s bridesmaids. This didn’t look good when Stacey was claiming rape. ADA Carisi couldn’t confirm when Stacey was drugged or Ryan’s intentions that night. The one thing he could confirm was that they did indeed sleep together.
The rape kit showed that. The cops have Stacey’s underwear that Ryan kept as a trophy. They also have a photo of Stacey with Ryan in the pool. One of his cousins took the picture. It showed the back of Ryan’s head and so he didn’t know that was his underage cousin when he took the photo. Only he did send it to his girlfriend that night. The photo showed Stacey smiling and happy as Ryan was kissing her neck. It doesn’t technically mean anything because Stacey was on drugs at the time. She didn’t really know what she was doing.
Still, it looked bad. Carisi went after Stacey for statutory rape. Her lawyer made a great case about her being taken advantage of and the whole thing reminded Detective Bruno of something he tried to forget. Bruno was sexually assaulted when he was fifteen by one of his parents’ friends. The older woman was drunk. She snuck into his bed one night and he didn’t push her away or told his parents because he didn’t want to embarrass her. Ryan may not be innocent only he was assaulted too. And that was being forgotten.
Carisi took Stacey to trial and the judge later declared a mistrial when the jury was deadlocked.
Its doubtful that the District Attorney’s office will try to come after Stacey again.
THE END
