‪‪Law & Order: Special Victims Unit‬, ‪Brian Cassidy‬, ‪Olivia Benson‬, ‪NBC‬, ‪Mariska Hargitay‬, ‪Dean Winters‬, ‪Chasing Demons‬‬ march 1, 2018 - Now

Law & Order: Special Victims Unit‬, ‪Brian Cassidy‬, ‪Olivia Benson‬, ‪NBC‬, ‪Mariska Hargitay‬, ‪Dean Winters‬, ‪Chasing Demons‬‬ march 1, 2018 - Now

Law & Order: SVU season 19 episode 14 review: Why Cassidy left SVU

Going into Law & Order: SVU season 19 episode 14, who knew that we would see Brian Cassidy humanized as much as he’s been? He isn’t always the easiest recurring character to root for due to his hotheaded nature, but through this episode we learned quite a bit of what we would consider to be valuable information all about him.

Brian Cassidy (Dean Winters) was at the center of Wednesday night's Law & Order: Special Victims Unit drama, and it ended with a shocking reveal about his past.

Cassidy spends a majority of the episode as the target of a murder investigation. He causes an outburst at a murder trial of a doctor accused of molesting young boys, causing a mistrial. The doctor is murdered not long after the hearing, so Cassidy is quickly accused.

He admits he went to the victim's house to confront him about his crimes. When he arrived, he was then knocked unconscious and discovered the victim's body.

After hiding out at apartment of his ex, Olivia Benson (Mariska Hargitay), his innocence is soon proved. However, it was not quite clear why Cassidy had been so riled up about this particular case.

After finding himself being cleared in the death of child molester Dr. West, Cassidy made a startling revelation to Peter Stone that he, too, was the victim of sexual abuse as a child when he was in little league. It lasted a couple of months and then his father go revenge over what happened. Nonetheless, this made an indelible mark on Cassidy’s life and, in turn, it is why he couldn’t handle being a part of the Special Victims Unit. Another part of that may just have been that he felt like Olivia was the love of his life and she was never going to feel the same way. That’s another revelation that came through over the course of this episode.

With this episode also exposed was more of the tension between different departments (homicide didn’t love SVU sticking around this case) and also how Peter Stone chooses to navigate his way through police politics. He was especially unwilling to trust Benson at first with Brian but, as time progressed, he started to understand that her past relationship was not impacting her judgment on the case. She’s stronger than to just put on blinders to the facts.

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. Stone then assumes that Olivia knows about the incident. However, she does not.

Cassidy then confesses that it was the reason that he left the Special Victims Unit back during the show's first season. At the time, he admitted he could not stomach a particularly grim rape case, but we now why exactly we was appalled.

"That's why I left all those years ago," Cassidy says. "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."

0commentsCassidy then departs, and runs into Olivia. He does not reveal what happened, but shares some kind words