Downton Abbey has captivated audiences for four seasons, but yesterday's episode disturbed many viewers. The show's creator and stars, however, are proud of the episode.

WARNING: This article contains spoilers from the Jan. 12 episode of Downton Abbey.

Sunday's episode of Downton Abbey was brutal. In the episode, Anna Bates (Joanna Froggat) was violently attacked and raped by Green (Nigel Harman). Fans everywhere were shocked, disturbed and frightened by the episode.

"#DowntonAbbey Like many bef him Fellowes made too sharp horrify-audience move to maintain aud interest. Spoiled story. Broke faith w/fans," Colleen Sherman said via Twitter.

"By the way, makers of #DowntonAbbey... you totally should not have done that thing to Anna. Just pissed off a whole lot of viewers," Joseph Dickerson agreed.

"Downton, I may have to quit you. #downtonabbey #pooranna," Katherine Butler tweeted.

The controversial episode aired in Britain in October, and Julian Fellowes, Downton Abbey creator, was quick to defend his work,

"The whole point of the way we do things on 'Downton' is we don't do them gratuitously," Fellowes told the BBC. "We are interested in exploring the resultant emotions and the effect these things have on people,"

Fellowes pointed out that the scene was not overly graphic, and the rape was not shown on camera.

"If we'd wanted a sensational rape we could have stayed down in the kitchen with the camera during the whole thing and wrung it out," he said. "The point of our handling is not that we're interested in sensationalizing, but we're interested in exploring the mental damage and the emotional damage."

Froggat also supported the scene and said she was "proud" that the subject was discussed on the show.

"I think it's a really brave thing to do ... I believe that Julian has written it in a way that is not gratuitous at all," she said.

Harman also thought the scene was a good twist to the series

"[I was] amazed and excited by it, if that makes sense, because for a show like 'Downton' it really leaped out as a bold and risky idea," he said. "We went for something, as it would be in real life, very shocking."

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