In 1998, the series revisited Luke's long ago rape of his now-wife Laura, something associate head writer Michele Val Jean had been thinking of since joining the show in 1991. Val Jean, who had been raped herself at the age of twelve, used her own experiences to bring authenticity to the story. The Luke and Laura rape-turned-seduction had always bothered her, Val Jean said, "I knew what I had seen on the screen, and it wasn't seduction." The series, that had turned perception this way after facing pressure from the numerous fans of supercouple Luke and Laura, now acknowledged Luke's actions as date rape without romanticization. In an interview with the Associated Press, Executive Producer Wendy Riche explained, "The times are different. What the audience perceives and what they expect is very different from what it was 20 years ago. They are more conscious date rape is unacceptable." However, she also clarified, "We didn't approach it as 'let's make amends.' We didn't feel guilty or felt like we had to." Riche ended by saying the ultimate message for the story was that, "It was not acceptable then, no matter what the town said or the press said. It is not acceptable to take control over another person's body under any circumstance." The story brought up the subject by using Luke and Laura's son, Lucky (Jonathan Jackson), and his soon-to-be love interest Elizabeth Webber, played by Rebecca Herbst. Lucky finds Elizabeth, a victim of rape, beaten and bruised in a park in February 1998. He subsequently finds out from his newfound half-brother, Nikolas Cassadine (Tyler Christopher) that Luke had raped Laura. Pat Fili-Krushel, then President of Daytime Programming for ABC Daytime, explained, "What we felt we should investigate is how, as the famous saying goes, the sins of the father are visited on the children." Head writer at the time Robert Guza, Jr. commented: