By Jessica Littles, essence.com
NBC’s A Different World was more than just a show.
“We got a call from the Assistant DA of Buck County Pennsylvania, because there was a little girl who had been raped by her neighbor while she was selling Girl Scout cookies,” Susan Fales-Hill told ESSENCE. “She was seven, so she didn’t know what had happened to her. And then six months later she saw [the episode we did on date rape], and it gave her the vocabulary to go tell her parents. They wanted to know about the episode because they were going to introduce it into evidence.”
Hill was a writer and producer on A Different World during the Season 2 episode “No Means No” which addressed date rape on college campuses.
“Moments like that, we realized okay, we’re a little bit more than the 20 minutes [on television].”
