Emmerdale actor Matthew Wolfenden has said that he is glad that some fans hate the grooming storyline because it was supposed to be "gross and disturbing".
The soap star plays David Metcalfe, whose son Jacob has been groomed by girlfriend Maya since last year.
Jacob's family recently discovered the truth about teacher Maya's grooming and David is struggling to cope.
Maya is set to face justice in court over the coming weeks but viewers don't know what the outcome will be.
Appearing on Loose Women today, Matthew said that he found it "really difficult" to act the scenes showing David breaking down.
"To have all the reveal, it was a long time coming," he said. "I had to do it justice."
Questioned about the reaction to the storyline, he said: "There was a lot of people that said that they hated the storyline and the couldn't watch it but that is exactly what we wanted to do.
"We didn't want it in any way to be this sort of schoolboy fantasy of a young boy and an older teacher. In no way titillating in any sense.
"We had to make it gross and we had to make it disturbing."
To help make the storyline as realistic as possible, Matthew revealed that children's charity Bernado's brought four brave young men who had been sexually abused to talk to them.
"They've turned what happened to them around and now they go around and speak at schools and conferences and that sort of stuff.
"So we worked very closely with them and my big question to them was, 'How did your parents react when they found out?'
"And what came out of that meeting was that they completely blamed themselves for having not noticed that anything had happened. So that's the way that we've ended up doing it and writing it."
*Loose Women airs weekdays at 12.30pm on ITV
