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Disa O'Brien made her first appearance 27 March 1990. She is portrayed by Jan Graveson.

Storylines[]

A tough-seeming Wearside teenager, she helped Diane Butcher to survive when she lived rough on the streets. She too had run away. When Diane went home, a bedraggled Disa was still out there, begging and selling sex. Unknown to Diane, she became pregnant during 1990.

Disa was living rough in London just before the birth of her child when she accidentally bumped into Diane and Mark Fowler. Then at Christmas, she went into labour alone in a derelict building in Walford and left her new-born baby girl in a cardboard box on the Butchers' doorstep.

Diane and Mark searched for Disa and brought her back, under protest, to live in Mo Butcher's empty house in the hope that she would become attached to the child that she first called Billie, then Jasmine.

Dot Cotton looked after the infant when Disa wouldn't or couldn't. Unwittingly, she let a stranger called Ken Raynor into the house. She did not guess Disa's secret: that Ken, the father of Jasmine, was also Disa's stepfather and his abuse had driven her on to the streets in the first place. Eventually, in a bid to get Disa back within his power, he kidnapped the baby. With the help of the police Dot trapped him, he was arrested and thankfully the baby was unharmed.

Meanwhile, Disa had confided in Kathy Beale, through the Samaritans, and was helped to find the courage to tell her mother that Ken had forced both her and her younger sister to have sex with him and that he was the father of her child. After her mother had accepted the truth and confronted Ken, Disa took her daughter back up North, ready to start a new chapter in her chequered life.

On 29 November 2010, Dot tells Julie Perkins that she reminds her of Disa.

Disa returns to Walford on 12 December 2022 for Dot's funeral. She reunites with Kathy, and thanks her for helping her to open up to her mother about her abuse. She gives a eulogy at Dot's funeral where she says that Dot saw something worth saving in those that people would have deemed lost causes such as herself and reveals that Dot helped to change her life.

List of appearances[]

Note:
(d) denotes a doof-doof.

1990[]

Appeared in 7/104 episodes

1991[]

Appeared in 18/105 episodes

2022[]

Appeared in 1/209 episodes

See also[]

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