Coronation Street actor James Craven has been reflecting on an upcoming storyline for his character Aaron Sandford, who gets drunk with Amy Barlow (Elle Mulvaney) and ends up having sex with her – without her consent.

Amy and Aaron’s night of drinking games and flirtatious behaviour leads to her drinking so much that she starts to feel ill. As she and Aaron kiss on the bed she pushes him away because she feels sick, and after that everything’s a blank to her. In the morning she realises that, by carrying on and having sex with her when she was incapable of consenting, Aaron has raped her.

‘Initially there’s no sort of thought in his mind that he’s done anything wrong,’ James told us of his character’s reaction the next morning. ‘He’s trying to piece together what happened as well. He’s got this thing going on of – did that really happen? It was so out of nowhere for him and it took him by surprise.’

Aaron has always been a sympathetic character who was a kind and supportive boyfriend to Summer (Harriet Bibby) as well as doing his best to look after his violent alcoholic father, and James feels that it’s a vital aspect of the story that Aaron is no monster.

‘I think that’s the really important thing about the story and that’s why it should be so important because despite the way he is as a person, he’s still capable of doing something like that,’ he reflected.

So Aaron is shocked to learn that what he’s done is rape.

‘He’s definitely going to be shocked to hear that because I think from his point of view he believes he hasn’t done anything wrong in this moment,’ James said. ‘So I think if someone told him that he’d be shocked and he’d be devastated.

‘To find a way for the character to justify his actions was quite a hard thing,’ he continued. ‘As far as he’s concerned everything leading up to this moment has been fine and she’s been ok with everything. But I think the most important thing that people can take away from this is that when you find yourself in these intimate situations be it with a friend, a girlfriend, a partner or someone you’ve just met, the absence of no is not a yes. Only a yes is a yes, and that’s all there is to it.’

Coronation Street have worked on this storyline with the Schools Consent Project, a charity dedicated to educating and empowering young people to understand and engage with the issues surrounding consent and sexual assault.

‘It was really interesting to hear about the work that they were doing and how they approached the situation and what kind of situations they’re dealing with,’ James said. ‘It reaffirmed for us why we were doing the story in the first place because it does highlight the fact that unfortunately this is something that is far too common and is far too normalised. They’ve been amazing and hopefully they can get the sort of reach that they need to be able to continue doing the work they’re doing.’

Source: Read Full Article