Alice Sebold apologises to man cleared of her rape - BBC News
Anthony Broadwater spent 16 years in prison after being wrongly convicted of raping Alice Sebold.
Ms Sebold wrote The Lovely Bones, which was later turned into a film

American author Alice Sebold has apologised for her part in the wrongful conviction of a man who was cleared last week of raping her in 1981.

In her memoir Lucky, she described being raped and later telling police she had seen a black man in the street who she believed was her attacker.

Anthony Broadwater was arrested and convicted, spending 16 years in prison.

A statement from Mr Broadwater, released via his lawyers, said he was "relieved that she has apologised".

In Ms Sebold's apology statement, she said: "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".

Lucky sold more than one million copies and launched Ms Sebold's career as an author. She went on to write the novel The Lovely Bones which was turned into an Oscar-nominated film by Peter Jackson.

Lucky's publisher announced on Tuesday that it would stop distributing the memoir while working with Ms Sebold to "consider how the work might be revised".

The book detailed how Ms Sebold was attacked when she was an 18-year-old student at Syracuse University in New York.

Months later, she reported seeing a black man in the street who she thought was her attacker, and alerted police.

An officer then detained Mr Broadwater, who had reportedly been in the area at the time.

After his arrest, Ms Sebold failed to pick him out in a police line-up, selecting another man. But Mr Broadwater was tried anyway and Ms Sebold identified him as her attacker in court. He was convicted based on her account and microscopic hair analysis.

After he was released from prison in 1998, Mr Broadwater remained on the sex offenders register.

He was exonerated on 22 November after a re-examination of the case found he had been convicted on insufficient and now-discredited forms of evidence.

His wrongful conviction came to light after an executive producer working on a film adaptation of Lucky raised questions over the case, and later hired a private investigator.

"Certain things leapt out at me as being unusual in the American criminal justice system - specifically the line-up procedure where Alice picked the wrong person as her assailant… but they tried him [Mr Broadwater] anyway," Timothy Mucciante told the BBC's Today programme.

He said he discussed his concerns with other members of the production team, but was assured that the book had been vetted and reviewed by lawyers.

"In June, I was separated from the picture, and... about a week later or so I contacted the private investigator," he said.

Mr Mucciante said he hired the investigator on a Wednesday, and by the Friday both men were convinced there had been a miscarriage of justice.

He described it as a "terrific tragedy... not only in terms of the unfortunate assault of Alice, but also the sort of metaphoric assault of Anthony Broadwater, who spent 16 years in prison and 23 years after that as a registered sex offender".

Mr Mucciante said it was "impossible" for him "to lay any blame at the 18-year-old Alice Sebold" for the wrongful conviction.

"I read Alice's apology and Anthony was very gracious in accepting that apology and I really applaud him for that. That's the kind of person he is," he said.

Upon hearing the news that he had been cleared of the crime, Mr Broadwater, 61, told AP news agency that he was crying "tears of joy and relief".

Ms Sebold said in her statement that she had spent the last eight days trying to "comprehend how this could have happened".

"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 Broadwater did," she added.