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Alice Sebold

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Alice Sebold, the bestselling author of the memoir Lucky and the novel The Lovely Bones, apologized publicly on Tuesday to a man who was wrongly convicted of raping her in 1982 after she had identified him in court as her attacker. The apology came eight days after the conviction of the man, Anthony Broadwater, was vacated by a state-court judge in Syracuse, New York, who concluded, in consultation with the local district attorney and Broadwater's lawyers, that the case against him was deeply flawed.

As a result of the conviction, Broadwater, who is now 61, spent 16 years in prison before being released in 1998 and was forced to register as a sex offender. In a statement posted on the website Medium, Sebold, who described the rape and the ensuing trial in Lucky, said she regretted having “unwittingly” played a part in “a system that sent an innocent man to jail.” “I am sorry most of all for the fact that the life you could have led was unjustly robbed from you,” she wrote. “And I know that no apology can change what happened to you and never will. It has taken me these past eight days to comprehend how this could have happened.”

Sebold's publisher, Scribner, said she was unavailable for additional comment. Scribner said last week that it had no plans to update the memoir's text based on Broadwater's exoneration. But on Tuesday, the company said it would cease distribution of Lucky while it and Sebold "consider how the work might be revised."

Broadwater, in an interview with the New York Times on Tuesday, said he was “relieved and grateful” for Sebold’s apology. “It took a lot of courage, and I guess she’s brave and weathering through the storm like I am,” he said. “To make that statement, it’s a strong thing for her to do, understanding that she was a victim and I was a victim too.”

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