Alice Sebold has apologized to Anthony Broadwater after he was wrongfully convicted of raping her in 1981.
The Lovely Bones author, who wrote about her sexual assault in the book Lucky, issued a public statement to Medium on Tuesday, Nov. 30, a week after a New York State Supreme Court Justice exonerated the 61-year-old.
Broadwater served 16 years in prison and was released in 1998. Following his release, he was placed on New York’s sex offender registry.
“First, I want to say that I am truly sorry to Anthony Broadwater and I deeply regret what you have been through,” she wrote. “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.”
Sebold stated that when she was raped at the age of 18, she merely wanted justice, “not to perpetuate injustice,” adding, “And certainly not to forever, and irreparably, alter a young man’s life by the very crime that had altered mine.”