Writer Sebold apologises to man imprisoned for rape

Author breaks silence as conviction is overturned and ‘attacker’ walks free after 16 years behind bars

ALICE SEBOLD, author of the bestselling novel The Lovely Bones, has publicly apologised to a man who spent 16 years in prison after she wrongly accused him of raping her.

The author said she was “truly sorry” and deeply regretted that Anthony Broadwater had been “robbed” of the life he could have led.

She spoke out publicly yesterday, a week after Mr Broadwater’s conviction was overturned after a re-examination of the case found serious flaws in his arrest and trial.

He was exonerated after a producer working on a Netflix adaptation of Sebold’s 1999 memoir Lucky became sceptical about his guilt.

The novel sees Sebold recount how she was raped and beaten in 1981 at the age of 18, in a tunnel near Syracuse University, where she was a student.

She writes of how she saw a black man in the street five months later who she believed to be her attacker.

After Mr Broadwater was arrested, she failed to pick him out in a line-up but identified him as her rapist on the witness stand. Microscopic hairs also tied him to the crime, but such analysis has since been discredited.

Sebold said America’s “flawed legal system” was to blame for the wrongful conviction and that it “brutalised” young black men.

Mr Broadwater, now 61, had always maintained his innocence after being jailed in 1982 for raping Sebold, now 58.

Lucky sold more than one million copies and she went on to write The Lovely Bones, published in 2002, which also dealt with the issue of sexual assault. It sold 10 million copies and was made into an Oscar-nominated film.

Publisher Simon & Schuster said it had ceased distribution of Lucky in all formats and was working with Sebold to consider how it might be revised.

Sebold said: “I want to say that I am truly sorry to Anthony Broadwater and I deeply regret what you have been through. I am sorry most of all for the fact that the life you could have led was unjustly robbed from you, and I know that no apology can change what happened to you and never will. I will forever be sorry for what was done to him.

“As a traumatised 18-year-old rape victim, I chose to put my faith in the American legal system.

“My goal in 1982 was justice – not to perpetuate injustice. And certainly not to forever, and irreparably, alter a young man’s life by the very crime that had altered mine.”

Addressing Mr Broadwater she added: “I hope most of all that you and your family will be granted the time and privacy to heal.”

Explaining the delay in apologising she said: “It has taken me these past eight days to comprehend how this could have happened. “I will continue to struggle with the role that I unwittingly played within a system that sent an innocent man to jail.”

The author said she was also struggling with the realisation that the man who raped her could have attacked again. “I will also grapple with the fact that my rapist will, in all likelihood, never be known; may have gone on to rape other women,” she added.

Mr Broadwater admitted he was “relieved that she has apologised”.

“It must have taken a lot of courage for her to do that,” he said.