Coronation Street favourite David Platt will become the victim of a serious sexual assault in shocking scenes to be screen next year.
For the first time in its 57-year history the soap will tackle the sensitive subject of male rape after David is attacked.
Weatherfield favourite David, played by Jack P Shepherd, gets drunk on a night out with a new arrival called Josh and wakes the next morning to realise he's been drugged and assaulted.
Widower David will be left feeling shame and disgust over what has happened to him and deciding whether or not to report the crime, reports The Mirror.
An insider revealed: “There won’t be any sexually explicit scenes, what has happened to David will be implied by his reaction and behaviour when he wakes up the next day and starts to remember some of what happened.
“With Josh still on the street, David struggles to deal with the shame of what has happened to him. This is a big storyline for Jack and everyone is determined to get it right.”
Show bosses are working closely with local charity Survivors Manchester on the harrowing storyline involving dad of two David, whose wife Kylie was stabbed to death on the cobbles last summer.
An estimated 12,000 men are raped in the UK every year, and more than 70,000 are sexually abused or assaulted.
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The dark storyline is set to cause upset for fans who have been complaining recently that the show needs to bring back the laughs and contain less doom and gloom.
Lily Gargan tweeted: "So much doom and gloom lately, families falling out, people looking for places to live. There was a time when Coronation Street gave me such a good laugh.”
Donna Inacio said: "Corrie is losing the one thing that made it everyone’s favourite soap... comedy!!!!"
And lifelong Corrie fan Sir Michael Parkinson who last month moaned that Corrie had become “more horror than soap”.
Personal trainer and mechanic Josh, who will be played by an unknown actor, arrives on the cobbles in January.
Channel 4’s Hollyoaks explored the issue of male rape in 2000 when Luke Morgan was brutally attacked by Mark Gibbs at the end of a long-running bullying campaign, and again in 2015 when John Paul McQueen was attacked by student Finn O'Connor.
Executive producer Bryan Kirkwood said he’d tried to do it while boss of EastEnders between 2010 and 2012 but had been told “in no uncertain terms” that it wasn’t suitable.
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Claiming that the Hollyoaks plot was the proudest moment of his career, he said: “Rape of female characters has become a staple over the years yet male rape or the sexual abuse of men isn’t a conversation we have, ever.”
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