This week on Coronation Street, Amy Barlow’s (Elle Mulavney) awakening and realising Aaron Sandford (James Craven) had sexually assaulted her will alter her life for good.
After Amy and Aaron have a few drinks in the apartment, the incident will take place. Aaron gets into Amy’s bed after she tells him she’s extremely inebriated and doesn’t feel well, and they begin kissing.
Amy eventually wakes up, groggy, and unable to recall how she climbed into bed.
Aaron admits to suffering as well, that things went too far, and that they shouldn’t have slept together as the young people assemble in Speed Daal for lunch.
Amy later admits to Aaron that she was much too inebriated to agree as she recoils in astonishment at the magnitude of his revelation.
Coronation Street is collaborating with The Schools Consent Project, a nonprofit organisation that was founded in early 2015 and sends legally trained volunteers into schools to present workshops on the legal definition of sexual consent and serious sexual offences, in order to tell this story truthfully and sensitively.
According to Monica Bhogal, director of The Schools Consent Project, “The Schools Consent Project firmly believes that learning about sexual consent laws allows young people to understand their rights and responsibilities and empowers young people by providing them with the skills, confidence, and knowledge they need to make safe, respectful, healthy choices around sexual consent.”
“We are pleased to have been consulted on this plot, which sensitively and carefully communicates important messages about the subject of sexual consent.” Its inclusion in such a comprehensive programme highlights the importance of having consent talks and the effectiveness of consent education.
