Emmerdale’s Matty Barton (Ash Palmisciano) is currently living through a nightmare, thrown into prison for a crime he didn’t commit.
Matty was in the Hide dealing with Samson Dingle (Sam Hall) and his friend Josh (Osian Morgan), who was being a nuisance. Josh first annoyed Amy Wyatt (Natalie Ann Jamieson) by making unwanted advances to her, then after she’d gone he turned his anger on Matty, hurling transphobic abuse at him and trying to get him to hand over the contents of the till.
Finally Josh pushed Samson towards Matty and Samson was accidentally stabbed by a knife that Matty had been holding.
Samson is sticking to the story that he and Josh concocted, that Matty launched an unprovoked attack at them. In the absence of any CCTV or other evidence, there was nothing to back up Matty’s version of events.
Currently only Amy, Moira (Natalie J. Robb) and Cain (Jeff Hordley) are standing by him, with Sam (James Hooton) and Lydia (Karen Blick) and almost everyone else siding with Samson.
Matty’s attempt to reason with Samson backfired when Samson reported him for harassment, and he was arrested for breaking his bail conditions and remanded in custody.
In prison, Matty is terrified of the other prisoners finding out he’s trans and making him a target. Trying to avoid attention he tells Moira in upcoming episodes that he hasn’t dared to have a shower and is scared to leave his cell.
Outside the prison, Cain has another attempt to plead with Samson to tell the truth, while Moira takes her own approach to trying to get Samson to admit he and Josh are lying.
The pressure takes its toll on Cain and Moira’s marriage as Moira launches a verbal attack on her husband and things escalate after Cain gets drunk.
In the aftermath of this, Cain visits Matty in prison and Matty tells him about his new cell mate, Les.
Hard-man Les has made Matty’s life in the prison even more difficult, as now he can’t even keep his head down in his cell as Les is always there making taunts and jibes at him.
Cain has, of course, got experience of being in prison and he has some advice. He says that the other prisoners will only respect Matty if he uses violence against anyone who threatens him.
Violence is not something that comes naturally to Matty and he’s horrified by Cain’s words, wondering whether he’s capable of sticking up for himself the way Cain suggests – and terrified about what he might have to do.
