by Mary Duggan

I read a discouraging post on Facebook recently. I was a “bystander” to a conversation between two friends. One of the two wrote that she had not been watching Downton Abbey since the episode depicting the rape of Anna Bates. She found it to be just too intense, too ugly for her tastes or something to that effect. Her comments filled me with rage. I wondered, who among us gets to be too sensitive to witness the very real and tragically common crime of rape?

I am a HUGE fan of Downton Abbey and I applaud the show’s creators for including this crime in their story line. I can’t wait to see how they handle it. I am holding my breath and praying they handle it better than our family did when my dear sister, Annie, was raped as a young woman. So far the wisdom and compassion the wonderful Mrs. Hughes is showing gives me great hope that I will not be left frustrated and angry. I hope that Julian Fellowes writes a story with a better outcome for his Anna than was written for our Annie. (more…)