Matty Barton (Ash Palmisciano) issued a desperate plea to his wife Amy (Natalie Ann Jamieson)

in Thursday’s (11 July) Emmerdale, following shock action to keep himself safe in prison.

As fans of the ITV soap will know, Matty was wrongfully imprisoned after Samson Dingle

(Sam Hall) told the police that Matty stabbed him in an unprovoked attack, when in reality, it was an accident caused by Samson’s evil friend Josh (Osian Morgan).

As a trans man, Ash has been terrified about his safety while inside, and earlier this week, his wife Amy unwittingly placed him in severe danger during a prison visit.

Matty Barton was beaten up in prison

She mistook violent and transphobic prisoner Robbo for Ash’s kind cell-mate Les (Stacey J. Gough), and passingly mentioned Ash being trans.

When Ash was later beaten in his cell, his worried family rushed to his hospital bedside, where a distraught Amy was devastated that her error had caused the attack.

However, Ash then revealed that his friend Les was the one who had beaten him up – and Ash had begged him to do it.

Ash heartbreakingly told of how he wanted to escape to the safety of the hospital, knowing that Les was due to be released and there would be no-one else to have his back.

‘Robbo was toying with me, threatening me – loads of transphobic stuff. I knew once I was on my own, I’d get a proper beating,’ he told Amy.

‘It wasn’t meant to be quite this bad,’ he admitted. ‘But it got me in here, and that’s all I was bothered about.’

Ash then made Amy promise not to tell anyone the truth, explaining: ‘Les was doing me a massive favour. If it gets out, he could go down for years and everyone will know I grassed.’

Hailing Ash as the ‘bravest man she’s ever met’, Amy agreed to keep his secret – just as his mum Moira Dingle (Natalie J Robb) and uncle Mackenzie Booth (Lawrence Robb) were taking matters into their own hands to get him out of prison for good.

Unfortunately for them, however, they look more likely to get sent down themselves, after Samson double-crossed them and had the siblings arrested for kidnapping him.