Exactly- it's not really fair, but there'd definitely be a 'no smoke without fire' feeling around it. Especially Dean, who has always been a bit weird around women.

He actually pled guilty to get a lesser sentence. How anyone could believe he didn't do it is beyond me.. I'm actually fairly confident most people knew that he did it but this girl (she was 16) was considered a 'headcase' and was drunk so it was like it didn't matter.

John Paul's rape was good for two weeks then became farcical. You would never guess he was a rape victim nowadays.

Linda's rape is nowhere close to one of the worst storylines. It's had it's low points but for the most part it's been pretty strong, particularly taking Kellie Bright's performances into consideration.

When I think of some of the worst storylines of all time, I think back to "Whose Shagging Kat", "Snake-gate", Tyler's boxing storyline and basically anything that came out of Bryan Kirkwood's mind!

The original poster is asking if it is the worst rape storyline in history. It started well but has turned to shit. I think General Hospital in America must take the award for worst rape storyline as the victim ended up marrying their attacker in a lavish ceremony which is still the most watched daytime soap episode ever.

I kid you not!

No offense intended to you but the General Hospital rape storyline was done in 1978. The whole meme of the victim falling in love with her rapist was popular in the romance literature of that era. Not that defend that depiction, but I will point out this is a very, very old storyline. In fact Anthony Geary who stared in that storyline has just retired from GH after working on the soap for 37 years. I don't consider myself young but I am too young to have watched this live. What's acceptable in writing and social attitudes definitely change. Its likely that viewers in that era would have seen this more as a fantasy. Its always brought up and at point its just historical interest. I doubt the EE storyline was influenced in anyway by this old American storyline.

A few eyebrows were raised at the time once the wedding came around.

I never said EastEnders was influenced by this, I am talking about a rape storyline. The thread IS called 'EE Was Linda's rape the most poorly done rape sl in soap history??' so looking at soap history, and soaps were around before EE in 1985, I think it is valid to mention it. I think that's all on topic.

Linda's rape storyline was possibly influenced by Kathy and Little Mo, with Linda's storyline and arguably doing a worse job of it.

I think the Nikki Shadwick rape storyline could be one of the worst in soap history. Was so badly handled.

How did that one end?

Yeah, Yeah I get it. But almost every time a rape storyline is done on a soap GH storyline is brought up and the question asked will they have the victim fall in love with their rapist, because this is something "commonly" done on soaps. It was done once in 1978. Yes it obviously it made an impression, mostly at this point I would have to say as a type of urban legend brought up by people who mostly never saw the episodes in question.

Once Dean was not charged, Its ludicrous that they would stay in Walford making Linda face her rapist on a daily basis. Even if they had lived there all their life no family would do that. The fact that they have only been in Walford 5 minutes make it even more ludicrous.

Crap storyline from start to finish.

As drama its been ok ish, but I felt at some oint it would of been good to highlight what she needed to do straight away.
Police
Pregnancy test before taking day after pill.
STD clinic for screening HIV included
Counseling

Even if she didnt want the police involved she portrayed huge naivety for a mature intelligent lady.

Jacqui's on HO was pretty bad, because I had sympathy for Gilly (the rapist) and thought Jacqui was annoying during the SL. I don't really know why I felt like that way, though. Maybe it's because one scene they were snogging on the sofa, the next, Jacqui is crying rape. I even thought that it was going to turn out that Jacqui was lying.

His family moved away due to the shame of it.

Whilst i didn't see the Gh storyline i have heard about it and did see many other similar storylines in the late 70s and 80s. Sadly the victim comes to see her rapist is just misunderstood and falls in love with him was quite common back then and it was offensive even back then. I'm not sure many people viewed it as just fantasy.

But then, one of the supposedly most romantic scenes in film where Rhett Butler gets drunk and carries Scarlett up the stairs to bed is essentially depicting marital rape so there you go.

Wow! That's a terrible ending!

Kirby went on to fall in love with and marry (off screen) Adam Carrington as well Blake also raped Krystle in season 1 and it seemed to make her like him more after a while. Jill Taylor also went on to marry her Rapist, Terry Hanson in sons and Daughters. Those are just 3 examples off the top of my head so it certainly was a 'trend' at one point, not just a one off.

It was all so rushed. I actually think they decided to write the family out and used the rape as an excuse to do it.

Just to explain, Nikki was drunk at a party and at first wasn't sure who had raped her. We, the audience didn't see either. So it was kind of treated as a 'whodunnit' (which was tacky in itself) for several months. Then suddenly, Nikki confronted Luke and he just confessed. The family moved away shortly afterwards.

Yes, but that particular family have been so poorly received by viewers that a "reason" was needed for the family to leave.

For the whole year that this storyline was dragged out, it was pretty much indicated that the real culprit had been Nikki's creepy uni classmate and the neighbour she accused of it after "seeing" in a flashback hadn't done it. It looked like the writers did a very obvious U turn by making it the neighbour after all.

Is it true that they never mentioned the actual word rape on the show at the time, it was revisited back in the 90s when another character Elizabeth was rape, that Laura finally admit he raped her, I remember seeing clips but wasn't sure.

It's a unusual route but from what I understand back then the coupling of Luke and Laura become popular as the show was at it's height back in the late 70s.

The only other show I know where a rapist has been kept on was Home & Away a character called Kane raped Dani Sutherland and the end up getting involved with her sister Kirsty, marrying her and getting her pregnant, pretty messed up.

The Musgroves where pretty atrocious, I think the story got dragged out for too long by the time, it was nearing the end nobody cared.

Yes, i just said something very similar.

Oh yes. The story went on forever (it felt like) but i meant the resolution of Luke (his name was Luke wasn't it) confessing and them leaving felt rushed.

Yes I think that was he name, oh yeah it was but I think by that time Brookside had started a slow slip of decline.

Have a look at the 'Rape' section: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nikk....27s_admission

Turns out Nikki threatened to commit suicide unless Luke confessed & the family left in the episode dated 4th January 2000. A bad ending in my opinion.

I think a more interesting question is why those stories were popular in a medium written for women years ago. I highly doubt it is for the simplistic reasons normally cited. Even if it was a trend it isn't a current trend.

I first heard about the Luke and Laura story in a media lecture in college in the early 90's. It was an old storyline then none of the people in the lecture were old enough to have seen it. I find it very striking we still 20 years later in 2015 talk about this 37 storyline as if it is reflective of common depictions of rape on soaps. I have not seen it so I have no real way of judging the storyline. I do think it has been re-filtered and judged in the media by people who have not seen it and that informs attitudes about it more than the GH fans who watched it.