For many Emmerdale viewers, the Marlon-Rhona family is a warm, sometimes chaotic but always loving family.

So the fact that they are dragged into one of the village’s darkest storylines – modern slavery, violence, psychological manipulation – makes viewers feel like they have been doused with cold water.

At the heart of this nightmare is April, a good-natured girl who was led by Celia Daniels into a path that even adults find difficult to navigate.

Celia and Ray are not simply “bad guys”.

They run a network of exploitation, forcing Bear and many other victims to do hard labor, forcing people to bury their crimes. It is April who Celia gradually lures into, from seemingly harmless small things to real illegal acts, and by the time they realize it, they are already in too deep. It all exploded when Celia showed Marlon and Rhona the live video: Ray deliberately crashed his car into Dylan – April’s boyfriend – and then injected drugs to “clear the way” to eliminate the witness. Dylan survived but fell into a coma, while April completely collapsed.

In a heartbreaking scene, April burst into tears and confessed to Marlon and Rhona that she felt like she had killed someone herself. The words “I killed someone, you can’t go to the police” (that’s what it meant) seemed to easily extinguish all hope. Marlon, who had always taught his children to tell the truth and believe in justice, was now faced with two painful choices: keep quiet so that his daughter wouldn’t be prosecuted, or tell everything, accepting the risk of his daughter facing the bar. It was no longer a matter of right or wrong, but a struggle between fatherly love and a sense of justice.