The man wrongfully convicted of raping best-selling author Alice Sebold over 40 years ago has expressed dismay at her failure to contact him, despite his conviction being vacated back in November 2021.
Anthony Broadwater spent 16 years in prison for attacking the author in Syracuse, New York, in May 1981. She picked him out in a lineup, but told the jury: ‘I am not absolutely sure’. He was convicted on the strength of her recognizing him, and forensic evidence which is now considered unreliable, and no longer used.
Sebold wrote a memoir, Lucky, about the attack. But when it was being turned into a film, multiple people working on the project began to question Broadwater’s conviction. A private investigator was hired, whose evidence swiftly convinced the district attorney that the case needed a fresh look.
Broadwater had been released from prison at the end of his sentence in 1998, aged 38.
In October 2021, his conviction was vacated.
Sebold issued a statement, but has not been directly in touch with Broadwater.
Author Alice Sebold wrote a memoir, Lucky, about her May 1981 rape in Syracuse, New York
Anthony Broadwater spent 16 years in prison for raping Alice Sebold in May 1981. He was released in 1998, aged 38. In October 2021, his conviction was vacated
This is a photo of a lineup out of which Alice Sebold mistakenly picked the wrong man in November 1981, nearly six months after her rape
The New Yorker magazine spoke to both, for an article published on Monday.
Broadwater said he was disappointed she had not been in contact.
Sebold said she was readying herself mentally to write a letter, as a first step.
‘I guess starting out with a letter would be pretty nice,’ said Broadwater.
Sebold, shortly after the conviction was vacated, wrote a one-page letter to Broadwater’s lawyers and published it on Medium.
‘I am sorry most of all for the fact that the life you could have led was unjustly robbed from you, and I know that no apology can change what happened to you and never will,’ she wrote.
‘My goal in 1982 was justice. Certainly not to forever, and irreparably, alter a young man’s life by the very crime that had altered mine.’
Sebold told The New Yorker that she was still wrestling how to deal with the implications of Broadwater’s conviction being overturned.
‘I still don’t know where to go with this but to grief and to silence and to shame,’ she said.
‘It’s the finding out of the details. I can’t dive into it without losing a sense of who I even am. My perceptions of other people, my trust in myself. That I can f*** up so badly and not even know it.’
Sebold’s book was based on her own experiences and was being made into a film. Producers then noticed that the conviction was on shaky ground
Sebold wrote in Lucky how she was attacked from behind by a man in the park in Syracuse when she was a college student in 1981. She describes over several pages in graphic detail how he raped her then let her go, telling her she was a ‘good girl’ and apologizing for what he’d done. The book sold over 1 million copies and propelled her career
The author, whose 2002 novel The Lovely Bones sold 10 million copies, remaining on the New York Times hardback bestseller list for over a year and becoming a 2009 film with Saoirse Ronan and Stanley Tucci, said she struggled being ‘strapped on the new reality’.
Sebold, who lives alone in San Francisco with her dog, told The New Yorker that ‘there was no ground when I thought there was ground.’
She said she no longer writes.
She added: ‘There’s that sense of standing up and immediately needing to sit down because you’re going to fall over.
‘It’s not just that the past collapses.
‘The present collapses, and any sense of good I ever did collapses. It feels like it’s a whole spinning universe that has its own velocity and, if I just stick my finger in it, it will take me—and I don’t know where I’ll end up.’
Sebold acknowledged the devastating impact of the May 1981 night on them both.
‘The rapist came out of nowhere and shaped my entire life,’ she said. ‘My rape came out of nowhere and shaped his entire life.’
Broadwater described how he and his wife – who, while dating, shocked him by believing his innocence – decided not to have children because he would not want them to have the stigma of a registered sex offender and convicted rapist father.
Broadwater is pictured outside the courthouse in Syracuse in November 2021, after his conviction was vacated
Broadwater, 61, shook with emotion, sobbing as his head fell into his hands, as the judge in Syracuse vacated his conviction at the request of prosecutors
Broadwater, seen in court, said he was still crying tears of joy and relief over his exoneration the next day
He said that he took jobs where he knew he could clock in and clock out, and be watched all the time, because he lived in terror of being wrongfully accused once more.
‘We both went through the fire,’ he said. ‘You see movies about rape and the young lady is scrubbing herself in the shower, over and over.
‘And I’m saying to myself, ‘Damn, I feel the same way.’
‘Will it ever be gone from my memory, my mind, my thoughts? No. And it’s not going to be gone for her, either.’
Broadwater turned down multiple parole board chances because he refused to say he was guilty, and apologize.
He said he had made peace with Sebold herself.
‘I thank the good Lord I made it to a point where I’m strong enough mentally to say, ‘Hey, it was the court. It was the system. It’s not the victim’s fault.’
Broadwater said he hoped to ‘compare notes’ with Sebold, so that he could understand how the district attorney’s office ‘duped her and kept her blind.’
She was not told that he repeatedly refused to confess, even though it would have seen him freed. She was also not in court to hear him discuss his distinguishing facial features such as scars she did not mention.
Sebold said that, when she thought of the meeting, she suspected words would not be enough.
‘We might do nothing but stare at the floor or weep,’ she said.