Whitney Dean (also Carter) is a fictional character from the BBC soap opera EastEnders, played by Shona McGarty. The character is the ward of long-running character Bianca Jackson (Patsy Palmer), and was introduced on 1 April 2008 when Palmer returned to the series after a six-year absence. Whitney is described by executive producer Diederick Santer as both an equal to, and younger version of Bianca, and is the oldest of Bianca's four children. Whitney was absent from the soap across four weeks in 2012 when McGarty was suspended for repeated lateness. McGarty took a break in 2017 and Whitney departed on 29 May and returned on 31 July. On 1 June 2018, McGarty filmed her 1000th episode as Whitney. Since her debut on the show, Whitney's storylines have revolved around the fracturing of her family life; her sexual abuse by Bianca's fiancé Tony King (Chris Coghill); her sexual exploitation by local pimp Rob Grayson (Jody Latham); her one-night stand with Joey Branning (David Witts) in the midst of being romantically engaged to her first fiancé Tyler Moon (Tony Discipline); her marriage with husband Lee Carter that ultimately breaks down as a result of his depression and subsequent infidelity with Abi Branning (Lorna Fitzgerald), which resulted in him passing chlamydia to Whitney and consequently led her to miscarry their unborn baby; her romantic crush on Lee's father Mick (Danny Dyer); her wedding to Callum "Halfway" Highway (Tony Clay) that ends in disaster after she learns that he had an affair with secret lover Ben Mitchell (Max Bowden), shorlty before their reception at The Queen Victoria public house gets caught in a armed siege perpetuated by escaped convict Hunter Iwen (Charlie Winter); her ordeal of being stalked by Tony's vengeful son Leo (Tom Wells), which soon culminated with Whitney killing him in self-ddfence; her relationship with local resident Kush Kazemi (Davood Ghadami) that ended in tragedy when the latter ends up getting murdered by her villainous employer Gray Atkins (Toby-Alexander Smith); her attempt to run over Ben and his father Phil Mitchell (Steve McFadden) in a hit & run after assuming they killed Kush, only to end up running over Phil's girlfriend Kat Slater (Jessie Wallace) by accident; and managing to bring Gray to justice for the domestic abuse and subsequent murder of his long-suffering wife Chantelle Atkins (Jessica Plummer), along with both Kush's murder and the killing of Mick's close relative Tina (Luisa Bradshaw-White). The child sexual abuse storyline between Whitney and Tony marked the first time that the subject matter has been broached in a UK soap opera, so much so that the matter was researched and developed with advice and approval from the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children. The inappropriate nature of Whitney's relationship with Tony resulted in over 200 complaints being made to the BBC and television regulatory body Ofcom by members of the public, and "one of the darkest and most disturbing storylines EastEnders has ever attempted" by the Daily Mirror's Beth Neil. The NSPCC however have praised the storyline for "helping to raise awareness of the hidden nature of sexual abuse". The storyline also gained EastEnders a Royal Television Society Programme Award in March 2009 in the Soap and Continuing Drama category.