Law & Order: SVU season 26 episode 2 recap — a diary cracks open a 20-plus year-old case

In Law & Order: SVU season 26 episode 2, "Excavation," Olivia (Mariska Hargitay) and her team have the difficult task of making a case against a federal judge, Leonard Andrews (Brett Cullen), with evidence from over 20 years ago. Plus, the victim doesn’t initially remember being abused and her history of alcohol abuse is attacked by the defense to destroy her credibility. Is SVU able to get justice for the victim?

Here’s what happened in Law & Order: SVU season 26 episode 2. By the way, if you missed what happened in the Law & Order: SVU season 26 premiere episode , be sure to check out our recap.

Moving day leads to a surprising discovery

Maggie (Johanna Braddy) walks into a bar ready to get a drink. The bartender remembers her and shows her an alcohol anonymous chip she gave him the last time she was there in an effort to dissuade her from breaking her sobriety. She claims her mom and stepdad are moving and need her help packing, but she wants just one drink first. He obliges her, and shortly thereafter, her sister Peyton (Joanna Whicker) walks in and drags Maggie back to the family home.

When the two women arrive, their mother, Lillian (Jessica Tuck), instructs them to go to the basement and sort through boxes from their childhood. As the sisters laugh at all the mementos they find, Maggie stumbles upon a diary. After reading just a few paragraphs, Maggie runs out of the house upset.

At the SVU precinct, Olivia is walking by the front desk and spots a disheveled Maggie. Maggie says she believes she was abused when she was a child. Olivia asks if this is her first time telling anyone and if she’s just remembering. Maggie replies she hasn’t told anyone and doesn’t remember the abuse. She just found a journal describing her abuse, written by her stepfather, Judge Andrews.

Curry (Aimé Donna Kelly) and Olivia read excerpts from the diary and are disgusted, but Maggie isn’t mentioned by name. Maggie again confirms it’s her stepdad’s handwriting, and because he describes an 8-year-old stepdaughter with a yellow nightgown, she knows he’s talking about her. When probed about the relationship she has with Judge Andrews currently, Maggie says he can be hard on her because she doesn’t always live up to her full potential, and she has a history of alcohol issues. Furthermore, both Maggie’s sister and brother are younger than her, so she doubts they remember anything that could corroborate abuse claims.

When Olivia describes looking into this matter and building a case against the judge by talking to other members of her family, and the possibility of him finding out, Maggie wants to leave. Olivia gives Maggie her card before she goes. Olivia later shares all of these details with Carisi (Peter Scanavino), but he doubts they have enough to charge the judge.

The memories come flooding back

As SVU is talking about a potential investigation into the judge, Peyton calls Olivia. Peyton frantically describes finding Olivia’s card on Maggie and says Maggie is at their parent's house drunk and spiraling out of control. Olivia and Curry rush over and find Maggie rocking in a corner of her childhood bedroom, bleeding and claiming she remembers. The SVU captain gets Maggie up and to the hospital.

At the hospital, Olivia tells Fin (Ice-T) and Bruno (Kevin Kane) Maggie needs stitches and her blood alcohol was three times the legal limit. Meanwhile, Curry talks to Peyton about the journal and the sexual abuse described; Peyton is oblivious. Judge Andrews and his wife Lillian then arrive, having received a call from Peyton.

Fin talks to the judge, who's shocked to hear Maggie alleging abuse. Bruno talks to Lillian and she is equally stunned. However, both parents clam up and request the SVU team speak to their attorneys when they learn Judge Andrews is being accused.

In the room with Maggie, Olivia asks what memory in particular was the catalyst for her drunken outrage. Maggie replies she remembers she was a bedwetter growing up, and one night she woke up and Judge Andrew was leaning over while she was in bed. She didn’t want him there, but he remained and pulled off her nightgown. When she called for her mom, he said don’t wake up Lillian or she’d be upset. Afterward, she saw the nightgown in the hamper and it wasn’t wet and neither was the bed. Maggie shares she has the nightgown in question in a box in her car.

Carisi makes the case

Olivia and Carisi talk about potential charges against the judge, when he and his two attorneys arrive and offer to sit with them.

The judge shares the journal does belong to him and it's his handwriting; however, he never abused Maggie. Instead, he wrote the entries as a groundwork for a fiction novel he was working on years ago and just used Maggie as a reference in creating a wild story. Olivia doesn’t buy it, but he winds up leaving a free man as Carisi still doesn’t have enough to charge him. That is until the lab calls and says the judge’s DNA was found on the nightgown, which combined with the journal entries and Maggie’s testimony is enough for the judge to be charged.

During the trial, Olvia describes how she came to investigate the judge based on Maggie’s statement. When Olivia is cross-examined by the defense, Olivia can’t say how she knows the journal isn’t a work of fiction, and the defense mentions that DNA can be transferred in the household through the laundry.

Both Maggie and Judge Andrews take the stand, and things start to appear as if Carisi is in trouble. The defense gets Maggie to admit she can’t remember actually being attacked or penetrated and that she was drunk when the memories came rushing back. The defense also gets Judge Andrews to testify that he once had a desire to be a writer, and his wife knew about his dream, which prompts the defense to call Lillian to the stand as a surprise witness.

Lillian shares in court that her husband was a double major in law and English literature, and that she knew about the journal. In fact, she says she read excerpts from it and didn’t think her husband had what it would take to be a fiction writer. She went on to say she knew about Maggie's bedwetting, and as a pediatrician, never found any signs her daughter was abused. Things look bad for Carisi’s case until Maggie’s brother Charles (Ryan Wellington) storms out of the courtroom after hearing his mom’s testimony.

Bruno and Fin follow him. Charles tells them his mom is a liar. He recalls his dad coming out of Maggie’s room a few times as a kid at night, but his mom just told him he was dreaming. Charles’ words prompt SVU to get a subpoena of Lillian’s medical file on Maggie. Lillian wrote about the bedwetting, but she also mentions the chaffing on Maggie’s privates, which sounds more like evidence of abuse.

When Olivia and Carisi confront Lillian with this information, Lillian confesses she knew about the assault, but decided to stay with her husband, not wanting to be a single mom of three. She said she ensured the judge wouldn’t touch her daughter again by having him write down what he did in a notebook and threatening to turn it over to the police if he abused Maggie again. Olivia is horrified the mother sacrificed her daughter in such a way, but Carisi is unfortunately unable to prosecute her. Once Judge Andrew catches wind of everything, he fires his attorneys and changes his non-guilty plea to guilty.

New episodes of Law and Order: SVU air on Thursdays on NBC and become available the next day on Peacock .