Almost four decades after she identified the wrong person who raped her, the author of The Lovely Bones has issued an apology to the man who was wrongfully convicted of the crime.
Anthony Broadwater was exonerated last week after spending 16 years in prison for a crime he did not commit.
“The only two pieces of evidence against Broadwater were Sebold’s identification at trial — after picking out the wrong man in an earlier police lineup — and microscopic hair analysis, now deemed to be junk science.”
Alice Sebold wrote a memoir about the attack in 1999, and has now apologized to Broadwater for wrongly identifying him as the attacker.
She wrote:
“First, 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. Of the many things I wish for you, I hope most of all that you and your family will be granted the time and privacy to heal.”
“Today, American society is starting to acknowledge and address the systemic issues in our judicial system that too often means that justice for some comes at the expense of others. Unfortunately, this was not a debate, or a conversation, or even a whisper when I reported my rape in 1981.”
Her publishers said they would stop distributing her 1999 memoir Lucky and plans to turn it into a movie have been stopped.
