Lovely Bones author apologizes to man cleared of her rape

Alice Sebold, the author of the novel and Oscar-nominated film, The Lovely Bones, has apologized for getting a man wrongly convicted of her rape in 1981.

In her first work as an author, in the memoir Lucky, Sebold described her horrifying account of being raped. She told Police that she saw a black male who she believed was her rapist.

Lucky had depicted how an 18-year-old Sebold was raped around Syracuse University in New York. She had reported seeing the man who raped her in the neighborhood a few months later.

The alleged rapist was then identified as Anthony Broadwater, now 61, who served a 16-year sentence, and had his name on the sex offenders register since his release in 1998.

Broadwater’s name was exonerated from the list after 23 years, on November 22, 2021. It was found that he was convicted on now-discredited forms of evidence.

After spending 16 years in prison, and having his name on the sexual offender register since 1998, Broadwater has now received an apology from his accuser.

Sebold apologized a week after Broadwater’s name was exonerated. In her statement she said that she is trying to “comprehend” how it could have happened, and how her rapist may have “gone on to rape other women,” and won’t spend time in prison.

She told Broadwater that she’s sorry, and how an “apology won’t change what happened to you, and never will,” and how how most of his life “was robbed” from him.

She added that as a “traumatized 18-year-old rape victim,” she “chose to put my faith in the American legal system.”

Broadwater accepted the apology and is glad that she finally realized it, and apologized.

After his arrest, Sebold was unable to identify Broadwater as her rapist in the lineup, but he was tried anyway, and convicted because of the DNA hair analysis, and Sebold’s testimony and identification of him in court.

Lucky’s publisher has reacted, and announced that it is working with Sebold to revise the memoir, and it will be off the shelves until then.