Lovely Bones author Alice Sebold apologizes to innocent black man wrongly jailed for raping her

Let me guess: she gave him signed copies of her books in addition to the apology?

I hope he sues the fuck out of her and the police...fuckers.

What a horrible story.

Ugh that poor man. While I don't think Sebold had any bad intentions - it seemed like a truly horrific mistake - I do hope she financially sets him up for what's left of his life.

Yeah, if there’s one thing folks love to do, it’s unnecessarily hand people boatloads of money out of the kindness of their hearts. Give me a break. The only way he’s getting a dollar out of this bitch is through the court system. Her income is already drying up fast after this and she’ll want to hold on to every last nickel she can.

Oopsie! "They" all look alike.

She actually realized rather quickly that she had probably identified the wrong man, but the system took over from that point. At least she says so. I'm not sure of the details or whether she's telling the truth. If she testified in court, that would have been her chance to redress that.

I hope that the use of DNA evidence is eliminating these travesties. That's why so many of these people being released from prison and exonerated were accused of rape -- the DNA now shows they weren't responsible. That probably wasn't available in Sebold's case. It just shows that someone traumatized by sexual assault is often not the best witness if the assailant wasn't someone she already knew.

[quote]The conviction was only overturned last Monday after a producer working on a Netflix adaption of the 1998 memoir noticed 'inconsistencies' in Sebold's story and hired a private investigator to re-examine the case.

YIKES

[quote]'I'm relieved that she has apologized. It must have taken a lot of courage for her to do that. It's still painful to me because I was wrongfully convicted, but this will help me in my process to come to peace with what happened.'

[quote]Syracuse.com reported that Sebold's representatives sent Broadwater a copy of her statement before it was publicly released so he could read it first. He told the outlet, 'It comes sincerely from her heart. She knowingly admits what happened. I accept her apology,' before bursting into tears.

What an incredibly sweet man that wasn't hardened by his time being unjustly incarcerated for a crime he didn't commit. It's sad he never bothered to have kids with his wife because of it. I'm sure he had trouble finding a decent job after too.

On one hand, she was traumatized. On the other hand, she's done well for herself while he has no doubt had issues since being released.

She should have been the one doing what that Netflix producer did and maybe then her book she wrote about it wouldn't be (currently) shelved and her movie that was going to be produced about it, wouldn't have been pulled.

R4, it might actually be wise of Sebold to do exactly that: Give the guy a huge windfall.

Her career might depend on it. How many earnest liberals are going to buy her next book as it stands now? My guess is not many.

And considering she only has a career because of the rape that sent him to prison for 16 years? It might end up being financially beneficial for her in the long run. To make amends, as it were.

R9 exactly. He deserves it and it's good press for her.

I feel bad for both of them, much much worse for Broadwater, but all of this only happened in the first place because some asshole raped Sebold and put her in a hellish situation through no choosing of her own.

I hope bookstores move her account of the incident to the fiction shelves.

So messed up.

But Sebold failed to pick Broadwater out of a police lineup and instead selected another Black man.

In court, though, she testified it was Broadwater who had raped her — in part, his defense attorneys later claimed, because prosecutors falsely told her that the man she had picked out of the lineup was a friend of Broadwater and that the pair were trying to trick her.

He needs to sue her. Maybe even write a book about it.

The guy who picked up the discrepancies in Sebold's account, and who was apparently fired by Netflix from the project over something else before his investigation began in earnest, should be touting the doco of docos to all the other streaming services. And they should give at least a healthy chunk of the proceeds to Broadwater.

Her apology is weak.

Why didn't she go public that she thought they were prosecuting the wrong man?

I hope he sues her into poverty.

The rape is not the only reason why Alice Sebold has a career, R9.

She's a gifted writer, and if Lucky hadn't happened, The Lovely Bones would still have been a hit.

That said: This is horrific for everyone involved. The guilt of falsely accusing someone would send me to an early grave.

[quote]The only way he’s getting a dollar out of this bitch...

What the hell is the matter with you? Oh, never mind, we all know what's the matter with you.

I see her book 'Lucky' is still available to purchase. The article states that is has been withdrawn but only by some sellers.

When exactly did Ms. Sebold realise that she had made a mistake and what action did she take help prove his innocence?

She realized he was the wrong man immediately after picking him out of the line up.

R21 And she did nothing. That is disgusting.

She should faces charges.

The Daily Mail article informs us that Sebold's house in San Francisco is worth six million dollars. I didn't realize she had that kind of money.

What is also shocking about this is that she wrote a book 15 or so years later but doubts about the convicted man's guilt.

I buy that she was young when the rape occurred and could be manipulated by prosecutors determined for a guilty conviction. But writing a book years reeks - what is her excuse for that.

And she has done a great disservice for other victims of rape because the more one hears about cases like this the more one starts to doubt all allegations.

Publicly, she'll never be able to show her face. Nobody will want to publish her work - her career is over and she has herself to blame.

And she let a rapist go free too and as she said herself he may have raped more women. Alice Sebold is vile.

[quote]She's a gifted writer, and if Lucky hadn't happened, The Lovely Bones would still have been a hit.

R17, she is a gifted writer but be careful making these assumptions. Having Lucky be a hit opened doors for her. Doors that lead to the Lovely Bones attracting more readers from an author who had written about the subject before which lead to the film being made. The kinds of promotion have changed in this day and age but a writer with an established fanbase (which she got from this case) is going to move books.

[quote]She realized he was the wrong man immediately after picking him out of the line up.

I didn't want to say it outright but while I get her being traumatized right after, once she had processed it enough that she's was writing a novel about it she should have done what she could to clear that man's name. Not that she shouldn't have done it even before that but assuming the worst case scenario mentally she could have been in for years, it was time to do that. Even when the idea of a film version was being tossed around with a celeb attached, she wouldn't do a damn thing.

It was only when the Netflix doc producer's investigation shed new light on the case, that she wrote a statement apologizing.

She could have saved her career by being honest, talking about what happened, going back and making sure that this man was free and then was able to get the charges expunged etc.

This part chilled me:

[quote]'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. I will forever be sorry for what was done to him.

She's right, the legal system is flawed but she is acting as if she didn't have a voice or a presence in the public eye to speak out about the case at any point in the past couple of decades.

She could have gone straight to Oprah and told her everything.

Better to let a criminal go than to convict and imprison an innocent man 😇

She knew there was something wrong and went along with it, hoping that nobody will be digging around. She knew she wrongly accused somebody yet proceeded to make money from it. She only apologized because somebody has clear evidence that she accused a random black man. And she didnt apologize that she made a flawed accusation, she placed the blame on the everybody else, the justice system, the “institution” without acknowledging her part in the injustice that was committed. Im sorry she is a piece of shit.

R25 Experience is cheap. Ideas are a dime a dozen. And, sadly, rape is a dime a dozen.

Writing is hard. Writing well is harder. Getting published and selling over 6 million dollars worth of books is an extremely impressive task, and one that is not a fluke due to a rape. If that was the case, millions of women would be best selling authors.

What happened to him was horrible. To say her career was made due to this case however isn’t true.

Oh, R28, I know a lot about sexual assault and being raped from my "roaring 20s" but we don't need to go there right now.

She very well could have been successful had she started her career by getting "The Lovely Bones" published.

However, this is not how things happened.

We can only go by what actually did. She published her first book. It was successful. Then she got to publish a second, as an established author, about a subject that she (unfortunately) knows something about, that was more successful.

Writing is hard, writing well is more difficult but there's a lot that goes into a book selling well other than the writing. There are plenty of unpublished authors out there, some of whom, may be as great at it as she is but talent, circumstance and serendipity didn't collide all at the right time and we have no clue who they are.

Acting as if the success of her first book didn't play into the success of her second is rather silly.

At least she experienced the glories of black cock

The details of her rape are brutal. Those if you referring to her as “that bitch” and saying the rape is the only reason she has a career…. disgusting.

The system fucked this up. The police were responsible. She was violently attacked as a college student and went through a full trial where she had to testify. Give me a fucking break saying SHE should have to pay him millions. How about the police department pay? How about they take some responsibility? Amazing that some of you will jump to first blaming her and not the racist system that put him in prison for years.

Believe all women.

What will the fragile snowflakes say if the justice system actually said we dont have enough evidence? They are gonna be screaming, its my truth and my truth is the truth that matters! I am being re-victimized all over again! The system does not believe all victims!

As bad as a poor innocent guy going to jail is that someone 😈 has been raping up a storm for 40 yrs

Hell hath no fury like a producer who was fired. Its great that he poked around and figured out that Sebold lied a bit in her memoir.

His response to her apology is far more gracious than mine would have been.

R31 Yes, unlike a lot of people nowadays who claim “rape” anytime they feel the slightest power imbalance in sex, or have sex and regret it, this is a woman who raped by a stranger, in public, at knife point. This is an extremely traumatic experience. The criminal Justice system failed everyone involved. Over zealous police and a legal system which sees all Black men as guilty is the problem here. There is no evidence that she knew that he didn’t rape her, hid evidence, or had any sort of racial motivation.

If she had never wrote a book about it, no one would be blaming her now.

That being said, she lives in a 6 million dollar home. Based on that alone, I do think her giving him some financial restitution would be best for all. Not that she is at fault, but she could still do good by him.

R37 If she didn't know somewhere along the line that the wrong guy was convicted why is she sort of apologising?

Because she knew and she has had plenty of time to raise concerns about the trial. So such thing as a good girl gone bad. Only bad girls. found out as Mae West used to say.

Have a feeling there will be lawsuit soon so she may be forced to give up some of her six million dollar house.

We'll never really know how much she knew, and when she knew it. She'll never tell the truth, partly, perhaps, because at this point in her life she might not know the truth any more.

Regardless, she made a fortune off a lie, and a simple apology is not enough. She needs to truly atone for what she did.

The odds of that happening? Zero.

[Quote] The odds of that happening? Zero.

The odds of that happening willingly? Zero.

Fixed it for ya R39. Let the court finish the job.

It's frustrating that this story is being presented by some media as if the rape didn't occur. She was brutally raped. Like many criminal cases back then, without DNA and cameras everywhere, the wrong guy was convicted. It's just awful all around, for everyone. The silver lining is that a lot of people are looking back at old cases and trying to seek justice.

If anyone should pay, it should be the system that should've done a better job.

R38 Because she is a fucking human. Most people feel bad is they play a part in an accident or injustice, even if they are not technically at fault. If someone drives and their tire bust, and then their car ends up killing someone, they still feel bad, even though they are not at fault.

R39 What lie? A lie is when you say something that isn’t true and you know it isn’t true. She didn’t do that here.

Everyone wants this to be something it isn’t: a white woman who got rich off of a poor black man by lying about rape and hiding evidence. It makes for a good story, but that isn’t what happened. And if this narrative is the one the media wants to spin, it will have a chilling effect on women reporting rape if the offender happens to be Black.

What happened is horrible and he is a victim and there needs to be compensation from the State in cases like that. And, as she IS in a position of wealth she should also give money. But that isn’t to right HER wrong, but right a wrong.

I believe she picked him out during the line-up, felt immediately that she had chosen the wrong man and then STILL went ahead and told the court he raped her. I hope he sues the absolute fuck out of her. I think she wanted someone to pay for hurting her and one black man was as good as the next. She's a bad person.

[quote]What lie? A lie is when you say something that isn’t true and you know it isn’t true. She didn’t do that here.

What she did so was embellish things for her book: things that were not in the court records, things she had no knowledge of but ran with. This is what made the film's producer get a PI.

Mucciante claimed Sebold wrongfully told audiences that her attacker had a criminal record.

“Anthony had no criminal record, even though Alice says in the book that he does,” he continued. “He’d had zero criminal record and had never been in a lineup in his life. He had just gotten out of the marines.”

He also addressed Sebold’s claims that Broadwater, while incarcerated, hired a hitman to rape her roommate.

“I am not suggesting that that was fabricated, but for the life of me, I cannot figure out how that information would come to her that was completely untrue,” said Mucciante.

Oh God this is such a mess. I loved The Lovely Bones and I read Lucky years ago, though can't remember much about it.

There are so many issues going on here. I don't think it's as clear-cut as branding Sebold as an evil racist who deliberately got an innocent man jailed as it looks like some people are. She was subjected to a brutal experience and handled the aftermath badly but can you blame her for that? Her mental health was probably all over the place at the time - and who knows how else she was manipulated by anyone around her. It is seen as racist to perceive all people of another race as looking alike but it is also a biologically-instilled thing - look up 'outgroup homogeneity' - especially if you haven't had much exposure to other races which she most likely hadn't at that time and age. I should be clear here - I am not saying that she is completely blameless and it is not right to regard all people of a different race as the same, REGARDLESS of it being to some degree innate - we should as people be able to rise above that; nor is it acceptable to accuse someone you have doubts over of something so serious, but again look at the context and consider her state of mind at the time.

She must feel absolutely wretched for wrecking an innocent man's life but remember she was a victim in this too. Also, her actual rapist is still (as of now) free and hasn't been punished. So much to unpack here, I think it's way too simplistic to just boil this down to a 'To Kill a Mockingbird' situation.

Not sure what would be a good resolution here - I think the legal system should own much more of the blame than she does as an individual though.

[quote] I feel bad for both of them, much much worse for Broadwater, but all of this only happened in the first place because some asshole raped Sebold and put her in a hellish situation through no choosing of her own.

Do you really need to explain that she didn't choose to be raped?

R43 Well it doesn’t matter what you BELIEVE. This isn’t fucking Santa. That isn’t what happened.

R44 She embellished for a book. So what? That isn’t a crime. He wasn’t put away due to a book that was published after his arrest.

This will be made into a conversation about a White woman framing a Black man, because that is what the media wants. The story that post traumatic rape can cause people to see their rapist everywhere due to trauma isn’t good for the believe all women narrative so it will be dropped. Believe all women never applied to White women accusing Black men anyway, so it doesn’t apply.

DL is now Frau Central.

It comes down to this: at some point she knew that man was innocent and did or said nothing until she was forced to, some [bold]40[/bold] years later.

Even if the man wasn't black, it would still be pretty messed up.

[quote]She must feel absolutely wretched for wrecking an innocent man's life but remember she was a victim in this too.

She was a victim in this. I don't think that's not an important thing that needs to be remembered. However, at some point she could have helped this man, that she knew at some point was innocent and she didn't. She just didn't. The system may have done it with her accidental help but it's not like this happened a year ago, or ten, or twenty, or thirty. She could have spoken up and she chose not to.

That is why her career is in trouble now. Publishers can see it and they're going to try and save it by adding something to her book to talk about this change while it's shelved in some places. Producers can see it so they won't make her movie. The larger public is going to see it when that guy finally makes his documentary and it all gets dissected over again.

One detail missed is that she sent the apology letter to the guy first, to get his approval, before it was published. He accepted her apology. I have no doubt that something has already been arranged.

R50 Explain. When did she know he was innocent? How did she know?

R11 Agreed. Everyone lusting for vengeance against her (aside from the obvious misogynists) seem to have forgotten the reason all this happened in the first place. I wonder what happened to the guy that actually did it.

She never sucked MY dick!

I agree that she should have come forward with what she knew. There is no excuse for that. She is a victim, but by not speaking up she victimized someone else.

If there had been no rape i doubt the Lovely Bones would not have been written.

In MY America, white people do not apologize to black people.

Remember that when you vote for me.

This is a very frau-ish thread, full of high dudgeon and judgment. Some of you obviously didn't read the details of the case. It's a complicated and conflicted history. He was freed in 1998, but his conviction wasn't overturned until this year. So she didn't let it go "for 40 years." Why she wrote the book after he was freed I do not know.

There are things to blame Sebold for, but the judgment here is somewhat misplaced. She's the victim and was chewed up by the legal/justice system same as anyone, though the consequences for Broadwater were devastating while she "made her bones" (pun/allusion deliberate) on the case. The poster above who says it's the police and prosecutors who are responsible are correct.

[quote]And she has done a great disservice for other victims of rape because the more one hears about cases like this the more one starts to doubt all allegations.

NO. There is no doubt she was raped. They got the wrong man, but stop trying to cast aspersions on rape victims.

She also made up lies about him in her book. Was she the victim of rape? Yes. Is she guilty of ruining an innocent Black man’s life and using him for fame and fortune? Yes. She isn’t innocent, she’s a terrible person.

[quote] Believe all women. [quote] —Kamala

And certain black actors with initials JS.

R69 your Kamala obsession is tiresome and boring

^ r59

If I were Broadwater, I'd take her money and then lock her and the prosecutor in my basement for 16 years.

She picked a man in a lineup. The DA said it was incorrect and the guy next to him was his friend and they were hoping to trick her. So she went along with it.

How are you assholes not mad at the "humans" who marshaled the force of the legal system to lie and coerce a victim to identify the wrong man????

And for the record, you fucking morons, I know this is DL and you'd rather be shitty than right and now that the government isn't hunting and shitting on us gays in massive numbers you feel so fucking complacent and docile about law enforcement. Idiots.

Whatever happened at the time of the rape, Sebold had years to process what happened and speak the truth. She didn't.

No one said she was "innocent." Nuance!

But was he exonerated exonerated?

She may have even made up the rape too given the tell untruths about other things in her books.

Nothing she says (or writes) can be trusted.

[quote]Nothing she says (or writes) can be trusted.

Lol, you're so trustworthy.

R23 She wrote The Lovely Bones, which is a favorite of mine. I’m incredibly disappointed that her apology is half-hearted, especially considering so much of her career is built on her rape story.

She should pay him. Personally.

How is she not complicit in destroying his life even though she didn’t do it “on purpose”? She identified a random black dude in court that she didn’t notice in the lineup. Shame on her.

[quote] She was subjected to a brutal experience and handled the aftermath badly but can you blame her for that?

Yes.

Hooray! Another celeb I can feel morally superior to (and tell the DL about it).

The Lovely Bones is one of those books I just couldn't connect with. It's a weird feeling when you dislike a book that's gotten nothing but rave reviews.

As for the falsely convicted man, what a travesty. He is unbelievably gracious. And I can't imagine living with the knowledge a man was unjustly incarcerated for a crime perpetrated against me by a different person.

I think Law and Order: SVU has covered something similar to this already with Henry Thomas and Kelli Williams. There was a cameo by Joe Biden.

[quote] Hooray! Another celeb I can feel morally superior to (and tell the DL about it).

Although most of this thread is screeching that I STAND WITH ALICE SEBOLD BECAUSE SJW WOKE MILLENNIALS ARE TRYING TO MAKE THIS A RACE THING AND A ME TOO THING WHEN IT IS ACTUALLY A COP AND LEGAL THING!!!11! but if you don’t actually recognise specific the man being fingered for your rape and you go to court and identify him and then write a memoir which makes your literary reputation which repeats several blatant (and, after the fact, ludicrous) lies about him, then yeah, you have committed several reprehensible acts and you can’t just blame the Po-Po for your own ethical lapses.

R52 Probably went on to rape a whole lot of other women which wouldn't have happen if the justice system worked probably in the beginning or if Sebold had been able to speak out earlier.

I get that an 18 year old would feel very intimated by the police and prosecutors, particularly the horrors that that had been through and would go along with whatever narrative they came up with. But by the time her book was published she could have come out with all that, incorporated it into her book Lucky. But no - she chose to do fuck all nothing.

R76 And for those reasons she should be charged.

Too little, too late, Alice. Give the man all the wealth you earned from that memoir and maybe you'll have made amends.

I don't think I can ever believe a rape victim anymore unless I witness the rape myself.

[quote] How does an apology get him back 16 years of his life?

So he was in prison for 16 years? Since 2005? But the rape happened in 1981? Where was he between 1981 and 2005?

R81 He has been in prison since the very early 80's and was released 16 years later. However, he has been on the sex offenders register which has also had major ramifications for him. Meanwhile Sebold has been making millions at the expense of his personal misery. Nothing she can say or do can make up for the damage she has done on him.

Ah, the utter narcissism of victimhood - her rape, her trauma, her PTSD matters most of all. Her sales, her success, her recovery is what counts.

Interesting how some of press are now saying 'alleged rape'.

Tell some lies to help convict somebody will result in people questioning the if the 'alleged crime' ever really took place.

She needs to pay up.

All the money in the world can't make up for the damage she helped inflict on an innocent men.

I suspect she'll basically disappear from public life altogether. She really won't be able to do any public speaking or so on without coping a torrent of justified abuse.

"All the money in the world can't make up for the damage she helped inflict on an innocent men."

What about the cops, the prosecutor, the jury and HIS lawyer? Are they going to suffer public shaming over this? Not likely.

Timothy Mucciante is a jolly Italian fellow

His Op-Ed

She sounds like a wretched cunt. If she knew he was wrongly convicted and said nothing she is truly nothing more that fetid pond scum.

R87 Chances are they are all dead - but at the very least they should be named and shamed and if still living prosecuted. However, I suspect because it was nearly 40 years that may not be possible.

[quote] I don't think I can ever believe a rape victim anymore unless I witness the rape myself

This is gross. And I’m not even a “believe all women!” supporter.

“Guys! Sexism is gross, you guys!!!”

So do Black Lives Matter or do we “Believe All Women”? The wokety-woke Yasss Kweens’ heads are exploding over this one.

Everything about her statements lack accountability on her part.

R87 the bitch identified him, it’s her fault.

Fuck off r93. It’s not an issue of sexism you nitwit,

This is a really good article written by Timothy Mucciante, the executive producer of the now cancelled film adaptation of Sebold's Lucky who started the ball rolling on Anthony Broadwater's exoneration.

I do think the reason nobody every questioned Broadwater's conviction is because people are reluctant to question a rape victim given the amount of grief they already receive. There is no doubt Sebold was brutally raped and knowing that people don't feel compelled to question the accused innocence.

Anyway, her 'career' is finished.

It’s obvious that Broadwater should now be allowed to rape Sebold.

I didn’t get the hype over The Lovely Bones. The self indulgent Peter Jackson disaster adaptation didn’t help.

As per r98’s link, this is weird. Switching the race of the attacker to white would have been a PR disaster.

[quote] However, as time went on, other aspects of the production raised red flags for me, such as the insistence of director Karen Moncrieff on changing the race of the actor playing Broadwater from a black actor to a white actor. Moncrieff’s reasoning was that she wanted to dispel the racial stereotype of a black man raping a white woman, but as the actual perpetrator had been African-American, this did not make sense to me. Perhaps she had misgivings herself about the case, and wanted to make the film version as removed as possible from the book, to “fictionalise” it, as it were.

Years ago I read a case of a woman who was viciously raped (a knife was involved) and the woman described how even though she wanted to close her eyes she decided that if she should live she wanted to identify the monster, so she stared at his face throughout the ordeal.

Months later she identified him in a lineup. He went to prison. A few years later she finds out it was the wrong guy. She is gutted, and is determined to apologize, so she meets with the guy. He is forgiving, but she continues to be tormented, wondering how could she make such a terrible mistake.

Years later she finds out this guy is back in jail for rape and murder. He's guilty as fuck. She tries to feel a little better but she doesn't.

Eyewitness identification should NEVER be the only evidence in a prosecution.

Why did Alice Sebold change the name of the 'rapist' in her memoir to Gregory Madison. Given that her 'evidence' help convict Anthony Broadwater why change his name?

Worried about lawsuits down the track?

Another article, this one from Salon.

Alice gurl, you in danger. (Mostly of your own making).

She is a monster.

Here is an article from Slant which takes a look at book Lucky again in light of the latest developments on the case.

Warning: contains very distressing details of Alice Sebold's rape but it is a very worthwhile article.

R105 You’re a monster you crazy fucking bitch. She was a savaged then profoundly traumatized 18yo woman who made a grave mistake.

I don't fault her for what happened originally at 18 years old during the trial, at the height of what must have been unbelievable trauma. It's still not a great look that the other guy was black too (that doesn't excuse the 'mistake' for me), but law enforcement should have done better.

HOWEVER, all the lies she made up about him years later in her book are egregious and malicious. Especially about him having a former criminal conviction (when in reality he had just gotten done serving for the US military), and the ludicrous claim that he called a friend from prison to try and rape Sebold's roommate or something. These are intentional, and actually quite evil things to invent when writing a MEMOIR, that is being bought and sold as the [legal] truth. Especially when at this point she had decades of distance from the case, and knew that the wrong man had been convicted, and sensationalised these false details anyway with the full knowledge she was making a profit off of someone else's suffering.

For this, she deserves all the flack that is coming her way. And while i'm sure she already paid him something, it's not nearly enough for ruining 4 decades of someone's life while you made a killing. She seems very messed up. And while he was gracious, her apology didn't really do it at all for me.

[quote]... her apology didn't really do it at all for me.

I guess mea culpas must now be crafted to satisfy the Twitterverse.

R109 what does the Twitterverse have to do with anything? As has already been suggested upthread, she sent her apology to him first. This hints that some sort of financial agreement has probably already been made. Of course he's not going to come out and say he doesn't accept the apology and that she's a trash human being if she's just paid him some sort of lump sum.

Especially when he has spent the last 4 decades in financial ruin (largely because of her refusal to do anything about it, which she could have, but instead chose to make up more lies about him for profit).

After reading the details of the rape and reading this, I'm not surprised if Sebold has ongoing mental health issues:

[quote]Of course this assault left Sebold severely traumatized, but just as law enforcement at the time lacked the technology of DNA analysis to apprehend criminals, no one seems to have understood how to help her. She went home to Pennsylvania to recover in her parents’ home, but when she needed to talk about the rape, her mother, who suffered from anxiety and disabling panic attacks, couldn’t bear to listen. So Sebold’s mother arranged for her to go to a psychiatrist familiar with the family. When Sebold explained the reason for her visit, the doctor responded “Well, I guess this will make you less inhibited about sex now, huh?” Other than this, Sebold received no counseling or other treatment.

Who knows what she was thinking or feeling when writing Lucky? It's quite possible she thought everything she wrote was the truth:

[quote]Although Gallagher didn’t intend her prompt to be therapeutic, she was in fact suggesting something not unlike the drama therapy used to treat trauma today. Sebold writes of feeling that after the rape, when everyone seemed to know about it, “magically I became story, not person, and story implies a kind of ownership by the storyteller.” The rapist still owned her. She was the victim of a story over which she had no say. To own herself again would require taking over the story and producing another version, one in which she triumphed. Both Sebold’s actions over the following year and Lucky itself constituted exactly that sort of retelling. It was writing “Conviction” that gave her an inkling of the way out.

To take control of what happened to her, she had to take control of the story. Writers inevitably embellish what they write while feeling that it contains essential truth.

This is such a tragic story: Sebold and Broadwater are both victims of a fucked-up, racist justice system. After reading the Slate article, I don't blame either one of them. The end of the article really sums up who is at fault here, and law enforcement isn't taking any responsibility at all.

[quote]Sebold has since issued an apology to Broadwater, which has been subjected to the usual critiques that now greet public professions of contrition. (Interestingly, Onondaga County District Attorney William Fitzpatrick’s announcement that he would not “sully this proceeding by saying, ‘I’m sorry,’” on behalf of his office because “this should never have happened” has received relatively little criticism for its wording.) For his part, Broadwater says he is satisfied, telling Syracuse.com, the website of the Syracuse Post-Standard, “It comes sincerely from her heart. She knowingly admits what happened. I accept her apology.” Earlier in the week, he told the same news site that if he met Sebold, “I would sympathize with her and tell her how I felt,” he said. “She’s been a victim and I’ve been a victim.”

1) she needs to pay up -- personally to the man whose life she ruined, as well as most of her wealth to an organization that helps exonerate the wrongly accused 2) the male defense attorney is (Syracuse) hot!

The latest development, the exoneration of Anthony Broadwater, clearly innocent of the crime he did time for is pretty much the end of Alice Sebold's career. Unless, she starts advocating a clean-up of the system that placed both of them in this situation.

Ms. Sebold will not be able to make public appearances anywhere without difficult questions in relation to the writing of Lucky or without people verbally abusing her.

What happened to her is simply dreadful in every way. And that neither of her parents actually supported her (they had better things do? WTF) must have been so painful and forever will be to her and understandably. I know Lucky has 'withdrawn' but I do think in light of recent events it does need to be withdrawn permanently.

Her trauma is not an excuse to destroy another innocent life in turn.

Hopefully she is doing something behind the scenes to both help Broadwater and advocate to reform the justice system.