Her memoir may have indirectly helped vindicate Broadwater. Sebold, whose subsequent novels "The Lovely Bones" and "The Almost Moon" became major bestsellers, noted that today's discussion of systemic flaws in the justice system "was not a debate, or a conversation, or even a whisper" in 1981. And certainly not to forever, and irreparably, alter a young man’s life by the very crime that had altered mine." My goal in 1982 was justice - not to perpetuate injustice. The author said in her statement that "40 years ago, as a traumatized 18-year-old rape victim, I chose to put my faith in the American legal system. He spoke familiarly to her and in her mind she connected this to her rape. Sebold also wrote in "Lucky" that she realized what the defense would argue: “A panicked white girl saw a black man on the street. He was arrested and convicted, finishing his prison term in 1999. An officer suggested it must have been Broadwater, who had supposedly been seen in the area. Sebold wrote that she didn't respond but looked directly at him and knew "his face had been the face over me in the tunnel,” where she had been raped.īut she didn't know the man's name, and police couldn't find him in a sweep of the neighborhood after she reported him. It was a stroll in the park to him he had met an acquaintance on the street,” she wrote. Sebold, 58, wrote in “Lucky” about spotting a Black man in the street, months after her rape, and being certain he was her attacker. I will also grapple with the fact that my rapist will, in all likelihood, never be known, may have gone on to rape other women, and certainly will never serve the time in prison that Mr. "I will continue to struggle with the role that I unwittingly played within a system that sent an innocent man to jail. "It has taken me these past eight days to comprehend how this could have happened," Sebold said. In her statement, Sebold explained her week of silence in the wake of Broadwater's exoneration. In a hearing, the Onondaga County district attorney told the judge, "I’m not going to sully this proceeding by saying, ‘I’m sorry.’ That doesn’t cut it. The conviction was overturned last Monday by a trial judge in New York. Broadwater was also tied to the crime by microscopic hair analysis, which has since been declared to be broadly unreliable by the U.S. Also on Tuesday, "Lucky" publisher Scribner released a statement announcing that, following Broadwater's exoneration, distribution of all formats of the book would cease "while Sebold and Scribner together consider how the work might be revised." Scribner said it had consulted with the author in making the decision.īroadwater, a Black man, was convicted in 1982 after Sebold, who is white, identified him in court as her attacker despite failing to identify him previously in a police lineup.
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