Hollyoaks’ John Paul McQueen will come face to face with abuser Finn O’Connor as rapist returns to the soap after prison release
JOHN Paul McQueen's return to Hollyoaks is going to be fraught with horror as he comes face to face with his rapist Finn O'Connor.
The beloved teacher - who is played by actor James Sutton in the Channel 4 soap - will be making a shock comeback to the village later this year, two years after leaving to be with first love Craig Dean.
But his return will coincide with Finn's own return after the then schoolboy viciously raped the teacher in the school.
The critically-acclaimed storyline raised huge awareness of male survivors of sexual assault in 2014 when it was screened.
But the decision to bring Finn back was a much debated one in the Hollyoaks' writing room.
The soap's producer Bryan Kirkwood exclusively told The Sun Online: "We've always been keen to revisit Finn.
"Keith Rice is a brilliant young actor who did great work with us five years ago with the John Paul rape story, so we felt that he'd been in prison for the correct amount of time and it was a very interesting concept to bring Sinead's brother back who is a convicted rapist, time served, as Sinead is putting her life back together after Diane.
"Diane is in the middle wrangling with turmoil with her two kids. That felt really appealing to us, half the writing team wanted Finn to be redeemed and the other half, just as correctly, felt that our audience didn't have an appetite to see such a hard-hearted villain be redeemed.
"So we're taking it very gently, very carefully and we hope we'll take the audience with us so they can make their own minds up."
The soap teased the "tense and emotional" reunion between the predator and the survivor, but before that Finn is going to deal with the impact of his sister's rape.
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In the recently released trailer, Finn is seen finding himself in the same prison van as his brother-in-law Laurie after discovering he had raped Sinead - and the clash looks to be violent.
Bryan added: "It's a brilliant soap coincidence that they're in the back of the same prison van.
"He's in court because he's a witness to a prison riot and he happens to be in the back of the van when this stranger comes in to join him and in the course of their journey, he realises Laurie is the man who raped his sister and all hell breaks loose."
* Hollyoaks airs weeknights on Channel 4 at 6.30pm witha first look episode following on E4 at 7pm
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