Alice Sebold apologizes to man cleared of 1981 rape featured in her memoir - The Guardian

Author struggles with role she played ‘within a system that sent an innocent man to jail’ after Anthony Broadwater, 61, exonerated.

Sebold said she was struggling with the role she played “within a system that sent an innocent man to jail”.

In a statement released to the Associated Press, Sebold, the author of the novels The Lovely Bones and The Almost Moon, said that as a “traumatized 18-year-old rape victim” she chose to put her faith in the US legal system.

After Broadwater was arrested, Sebold failed to identify him in a police lineup, picking a different man as her attacker because she was frightened of “the expression in his eyes”.

Sebold, who has not previously commented on Broadwater’s exoneration, said in her statement: “I am grateful that Mr Broadwater has finally been vindicated, but the fact remains that 40 years ago, he became another young Black man brutalized by our flawed legal system.