Agreed. This sends put the message report asap and DO NOT bottle it up for months sp you can send the offender down.

I love the fact that people are saying that Dean is being portrayed as likable and sympathetic when nobody on this forums likes Dean as a person.

Sure, I think he is a good character but that does not mean I think he is a good person.

I also don't feel sorry for Dean that his daughter is unwell, I feel sorry for Jade herself. Dean doesn't actually have to deal with any it.

You are also acting like everyone on the square believes Dean which is not the case. We only really know that Shirley, Buster, The Foxes, Lola and Roxy believes him and thats because they are all close to him.

We also know that the masoods, stacey, most carters, Jane and Sharon don't go near him.

As far as I'm concerned, the story could be over now and I would be happy with it. Not everything has to have a happy ending.

It's not upsetting me but it bothers me when i think of people I know or people in general who are victims of sexual abuse. Yes, this show is fictional but soaps have been key in allowing certain situations to be made more aware to an audience or even allowing victims to come forward. As far as i am concerned, EE hasn't done either. It has tried to make a rapist come across as likeable. Thankfully many people on here don't fall for it but the proof of trying to make him likeable lies in the writing.

The rape storyline was done the minute is took is attention away from who it should of been about Linda!

All it's been about is Mick and Shirley arguing about Dean, nothing else.

It's pathetic that the own victim got sweep under the carpet for repetitive scenes of them two.

At this point I could careless about the s/l or Dean, they obviously have no intention of bringing it to a close as we know how much they love sucking dry a storyline so we're are stuck with it potentially going around and round in circles for more months.

The storyline was shoddily done and execute, one of the worse to come out of DTC time on the show.

No, but there should at least be an ending.

This storyline didn't even have a middle, let alone an end. It's been left hanging for almost a year.

The Carters clearly know that Dean is guilty regardless of the lack of evidence. In Babe's case, she's not been around much and is not particularly close to Linda so it's natural she would be a fence sitter and we know that Stan while he was alive sided with and believed Dean.

As rape victims themselves, it's only natural that Stacey and Ronnie would side with Linda and Sharon being Linda's best friend would also side with her.

As for the others, some of them work for him and can't risk jeopardising their jobs. Nobody other than the viewers saw what happened and since Dean wasn't actually charged, most of the characters must use their own judgement. Dean has not directly harmed the Beales or Cokers, and they are not particularly close to the Carters so it's realistic that they would act normal round him if their paths happen to cross.

There was once a boy in my school who was always nice to me. My then best fried alleged that he bullied her outside of school. While I believed my friend, I still acted normal round him - I just didn't pursue a close friendship out of loyalty to my friend but if I didn't have the utmost faith in my friend's honesty I would never have thought that boy was a bully.

To be fair, Dean has more recently come across as a prat with his jealousy of Charlie, refusal to cover for Roxy on the stall etc.

I think that they should show that a) not all rapists are caught, convicted and imprisoned straight away and b) not all of them are evil cold blooded monsters but as another poster said, the complication of Mick being Shirley's son and the Shirley/Mick/Dean feud and the baby Ollie stuff has damaged things a bit. There should have been equal emphasis on how the rape affected both Linda and Dean, more exploration of Dean's mental health and maybe have Mick and Linda split for a while after he found out, then get back together slowly but have things not quite be the same as before which would also be more realistic.

Yes it's annoying that he's still walking round free and hasn't really paid for it apart from the fact almost his entire family have turned their backs on him BUT I actually find it more realistic than a lot of rape storylines in soap.

In real life, as much as we'd like to think bad people get punished, there's more than a few left wandering around free and getting away with these things.

I do watch those as well and they are much better than the tripe Eastenders is putting out under this EP who clearly has his favourites.

The biigest injustice of the storyline is that it became more about Shirley and Mick in the end which is just wrong. It would have been better to explore how Dean developed or see him come out of denial about what happened.

We still do see glimpses of how Linda is dealing with it which is good.

The aftermath was pathetic.

We've seen bits of Linda dealing with it but not even to the standard that it should of been, she effectively become a extra in her own story.

Even exploring from the the rapist perspective was left out, we know something bad happened to Dean in prison, why hasn't that never been talked about or looked into.

No one care about seeing slinging matches of Mick and Shirley, Mick huffing and puffing about Dean and Shirley harassing Linda and defending Dean nearly 5 months we had of it.

I wanted to see all angles. I wanted to see Linda, Shirley and Dean. But I would have preferred to explore Shirley trying to come to terms with her son commiting such a crime, leading to her and Linda bonding, Linda's emotions and also it would have been interesting to explore Dean's mental health rather than all of this 'who's the daddy' and Dean going AWOL abd threatening to burn down the Vic stuff.

I agree.

It was basically white washed with crap, They couldn't get one angle right, I've never known a show beside HO (JP Rape) to get this type of storyline so wrong, the baby storyline wasn't needed either.

Can only hope the NY episodes might bring some sort of conclusion to this whole saga.

well said

having said that tho, the focus of the story SHOULD have been on Linda and it wasnt

it was instead on Mick and Shirley fighting (yawn) and poor Linda became the backstory

very wrong and shame on EE for doing this

I'm still hoping Ronnie does something horrible to him

He obviously knows he's guilty, although some of his fans seem to think that by saying he's unaware of his actions, he's somehow sympathetic. He didn't almost own up to Linda and basically own up to his dad for laughs.

I haven't actually been watching EE lately, so I don't know if the story has progressed much. It became boring a long time ago. They wasted a good opportunity.

Couldn't agree more Ellie..... They go on and on about real life.....EE is not real life! Do people come back from the dead everyday??? Pathetic!

It will conclude at some point, I've no doubt - but I'd like to see a Dean/Linda two hander.

That's one example. Soaps sensationalise things yes, but they also reflect social issues. Fact is, rape doesn't follow a black and white narrative all the time, not everybody gets their comeuppance and not everybody gets their justice. In a time when people bemoan repetitive storylines, I think it's refreshing to see something different to the norm.

It would have been far more interesting if the rape hadn't been shown and they had gone down the path of Dean being delusional, thinking it was a one night stand and that he was in a relationship with Linda when he wasn't and stalking her (like Derek/Kat, except in that instance it was a consensual affair).

The whole story should never have happened in the first place, its one even DTC wishes he could erase

So would I and preferably one that is not interrupted by Mick.

I agree. A Derek/Kat rape and a Dean/Linda stalking storyline would have been far better. Also, if they wanted to show rape within a family unit they could have done that with Derek and Tanya - this would also have given Jake a chance to play a very angry Max.

I must admit I was expecting Dean to get some sort of comeuppance by now, even if he has escaped jail. A man who has seemingly 'got away with it' is more likely to repeat this behaviour with another victim. Dean is mentally unstable and will hopefully unravel soon.