It was a day she’d been dreading for months – having to recall the horrific ordeal she was subjected to at the hands of her vile stepson, who was wrapped up in a disgusting online community of misogyny and thought it was acceptable to mistreat women.<\/p>\n
As viewers will recall, when she defied him, he knocked her to the ground and began to record himself abusing her.<\/a><\/p>\n Vicki (Alice Haig) had to face her abuser Joel (Max Murray) in court.\u00a0BBC\/Jack Barns\/Kieron McCarron<\/p>\n Having spent months in court, Vicki has been given a lot of time to dwell on her future, and who is part of it. She pondered whether she could have a future with Joel’s dad Ross (Alex Walkinshaw), but eventually agreed to take things slowly with him.<\/p>\n In the meantime, she’s fought feelings for Zack Hudson (James Farrar), but as sparks flew on the eve of the trial, she was unable to resist temptation.<\/a><\/p>\n In today’s episode, after waking up in his bed full of regret, Vicki made her way across the Square and faced Ross. He wanted to know where she’d spent the night, and she quickly made the excuse that she had stayed at Phil Mitchell’s (Steve McFadden) house after catching up with brother Mark (Stephen Aaron-Sipple).<\/p>\n Add Radio Times as a Preferred Source on Google<\/a> The trio then made their way to court, swiftly followed by Zack who wanted to show his support.<\/p>\n Joel was confident that his time in young-offenders was coming to a close and he’d soon be a free man, boldly telling Ross that he wanted to grab a McKlunky’s takeaway when he got home.<\/p>\n The first person to give evidence was his one-time mate Tommy Moon (Sonny Kendall), who was also entwined into Joel’s vicious ideologies.<\/p>\n Joel’s defence lawyer began to tear strips off the lad, noting his own violent behaviour towards women didn’t exactly paint him as a credible witness. This left Tommy’s parents Kat and Alfie Moon (Jessie Wallace and Shane Richie) enraged, and they cried out for the court to have more faith in him.<\/p>\n Joel managed to make Vicki look bad.\u00a0BBC\/Jack Barns\/Kieron McCarron<\/p>\n Vicki then took to the stand to tell her side of the story, and broke into tears as she recalled the disgusting attack. The lawyer then began to mention several pieces of damning information, that would discredit a number of her arguments.<\/p>\n Joel had told them about how she borrowed \u00a325k from sister Sharon Watts (Letitia Dean) to pay off the family of a girl he’d up-skirted in Australia, and how Vicki paid off another of his victims after he inappropriately touched her<\/a> on the tube.<\/p>\n Overcome with emotion, Vicki charged out of the courtroom and into the road outside. To her, the battle was over, and she had lost.<\/p>\n But will Joel eventually face justice?<\/p>\n Anyone affected by the issues raised above can find support by visiting Rape Crisis<\/a>, or calling their 24\/7 Rape & Sexual Abuse Support Line on 0808 500 2222.<\/p>\n Read more:<\/p>\n Visit our dedicated EastEnders<\/a> page for all the latest news, interviews and spoilers.<\/p>\n Add EastEnders to your watchlist on the Radio Times: What to Watch app<\/a> \u2013 download now for daily TV recommendations, features and more.<\/p>\n Check out more of our Soaps<\/a> coverage or visit our TV Guide<\/a> and Streaming Guide <\/a>to find out what’s on. For more TV recommendations and reviews, listen to The Radio Times Podcast<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"This article includes discussion of sexual harassment and assault that some readers may find distressing. Vicki Fowler (Alice…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":261860,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[146,85,46,411],"class_list":{"0":"post-261859","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-tv","8":"tag-entertainment","9":"tag-il","10":"tag-israel","11":"tag-tv"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/261859","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=261859"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/261859\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/261860"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=261859"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=261859"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=261859"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"Vicki,](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/545910-6c04efd.jpg\" "\\"545910,TITLE:Eastenders\\"")
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<\/p>\n![\"Joel](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/1769605695_605_545911-692f05c.jpg\" "\\"545911,TITLE:Eastenders\\"")
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