Alice Sebold, author of the best-selling novel The Lovely Bones, on Tuesday apologized to a black man who spent 16 years in prison for her 1981 rape, only to see his conviction overturned last week.
“I want to say that I am truly sorry to Anthony Broadwater and I deeply regret what you have been through,” said Sebold, whose breakthrough book Lucky described her traumatic assault at the age of 18.
“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,” Sebold, now 58, said in a statement.
Photo: AP
Broadwater, 61, had always maintained his innocence, but was convicted in 1982 of the rape and spent 16 years behind bars.
Shortly after his release, Lucky came out in 1999, a memoir in which Sebold described the brutal attack she experienced as a first-year university student.
Sebold — whose bestseller The Lovely Bones also dealt with the issue of sexual assault — said she was “grateful that Mr Broadwater has finally been vindicated.”
“The fact remains that 40 years ago, he became another young black man brutalized by our flawed legal system. I will forever be sorry,” she said.
Five months after Sebold reported the rape, Broadwater was arrested after she passed him on the street and identified him as the possible attacker, media reports said.
She failed to pick him out of a police lineup, but he was tried anyway and convicted largely based on her account and a hair analysis later found to be flawed.
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