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White Woman Apologizes To Black Man Who Spent 16 Years In Jail After She Falsely Accused Him Of R*ping Her

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White Woman Apologizes to Black Man Who Spent 16 Years In Jail After She Falsely Accused Him of R*ping Her
A popular writer, Alice Sebold has tendered an apology to a black man she falsely accused of r%ping her over 30 years ago.
Sebold went ahead to become a best-selling author of the memoir “Lucky” and the novel “The Lovely Bones,”.
She apologized publicly on Tuesday to Anthony J. Broadwater, the man who was wrongly convicted of r%ping 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 J. Broadwater, was vacated by a state court judge in Syracuse, N.Y., who concluded, in consultation with the local district attorney and Mr. Broadwater’s lawyers, that the case against him was deeply flawed.
As a result of the conviction, Mr. Broadwater, 61, spent 16 years in prison before being released in 1998 and was forced to register as a s3x offender.
In a statement posted on the website Medium, Ms. 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.”
Ms. Sebold’s statement was reported earlier by The Associated Press. Her publisher, Scribner, said she was not available for additional comment.
Scribner said last week that it had no plans to update the memoir’s text based on Mr. Broadwater’s exoneration. But on Tuesday, the company said it would cease distribution of “Lucky” while it and Ms. Sebold “consider how the work might be revised.”
Mr. Broadwater, in an interview with The New York Times on Tuesday, said he was “relieved and grateful” for Ms. 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.”
Ms. Sebold was 18 and a student at Syracuse University when the r%pe that led to Mr. Broadwater’s wrongful conviction occurred.
In “Lucky,” which was published in 1999, she gives a searing account of the assault and of the trauma she subsequently endured. She also writes in detail about the trial and about how she became convinced she had recognized Mr. Broadwater, whom she referred to with a pseudonym in the book, as her attacker after passing him on the street months after the r%pe.
The memoir chronicles mishaps in the case, including the fact that a composite sketch of her attacker, based on her description, did not resemble him.
The book also describes Ms. Sebold’s fear that the prosecution might be derailed after she identified a different man, not Mr. Broadwater, in a police lineup.
Later, she identified Mr. Broadwater as her attacker in court. After a brief trial, he was convicted of first-degree rape and five other charges.
“Lucky” started Ms. Sebold’s career and paved the way for her breakout novel, “The Lovely Bones,” which also centers on sexual assault. It has sold millions of copies and was made into a feature film.
Although Ms. Sebold gave Mr. Broadwater the fictitious name Gregory Madison in the memoir, he said he had been forced to suffer the stigma of being branded a s3x offender even after being released from prison.
He had always insisted he was innocent and was denied parole several times for refusing to acknowledge guilt. He took two polygraph tests, decades apart, with experts who determined that his account was truthful.
He tried repeatedly over the years to hire lawyers to help prove his innocence. Those efforts were unsuccessful until recently, when a planned film adaptation of “Lucky” helped raise new questions about the case.
Timothy Mucciante, who was working as executive producer on the film version, said in an interview with The Times that he had started to doubt Ms. Sebold’s account after reading the memoir and the script earlier this year.
Mr. Mucciante said he had been struck by how little evidence was presented at Mr. Broadwater’s trial. He said he had been fired from the production after raising questions about the story. (The feature film was dropped after losing its financing, Variety reported.)
Broadwater in the middle
Broadwater in the middle – Katrina Tulloch/The Post-Standard, via Associated Press
“It seemed like Anthony was wronged,” Mr. Mucciante told The Times.
Mr. Mucciante hired a private investigator, Dan Myers, who had spent 20 years with the Sheriff’s Office in Onondaga County, N.Y., before retiring as a detective in 2020. After finding and interviewing Mr. Broadwater, Mr. Myers became convinced he had been falsely accused.
Mr. Myers, who shares office space with a law firm, recommended that Mr. Broadwater hire one of the lawyers there, J. David Hammond. Mr. Hammond reviewed the investigation and agreed that there was a strong argument for setting the conviction aside.
In their motion to vacate the conviction, Mr. Hammond and a second lawyer, Melissa K. Swartz, argued that the case rested entirely on two flawed elements: Ms. Sebold’s courtroom identification of Mr. Broadwater and a now-discredited method of microscopic hair analysis.
Mr. Mucciante’s production company, Red Badge Films, is now working on a documentary about the case, “Unlucky,” with a second production company, Red Hawk Films. Mr. Broadwater and those who helped vacate the conviction are also participating.
In her statement, Ms. Sebold expressed sorrow that in seeking justice for herself, she had harmed Mr. Broadwater beyond the 16 years he was incarcerated “in ways that further serve to wound and stigmatize, nearly a full life sentence.”
 
She also sounded anguished over a question that remains unresolved.
“I will also grapple,” she wrote, “with the fact that my rapist will, in all likelihood, never be known.”
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French Schools Send Home Schoolgirls For Wearing Muslim Dress Abayas

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French President Emmanuel Macron

French schools sent dozens of girls home for refusing to remove their abayas – an over-garment from the shoulders to the feet worn by Muslim women – on the first day of the school year, a government minister said on Tuesday.

Defying a ban on the Muslim dress, nearly 300 girls showed up on Monday morning wearing an abaya, education secretary Gabriel Attal told the BFM broadcaster.

The Daily Mail quoted Attal as saying that most agreed to change out of the dress, but 67 refused and were sent home.

The government announced last month it was banning the abaya in schools, saying it broke the rules on secularism in education that have already seen Muslim headscarves banned on the grounds they constitute a display of religious affiliation.

The move gladdened the political Right but the hard-Left argued it represented an affront to civil liberties.

French schools sent dozens of girls home for refusing to remove their abayas – an over-garment from the shoulders to the feet worn by Muslim women – on the first day of the school year, a government minister said on Tuesday.

Announcing the ban last month, Attal said at the time: ‘When you walk into a classroom, you shouldn’t be able to identify the pupils’ religion just by looking at them. I have decided that the abaya can no longer be worn in schools.’

Attal said the girls refused entry were given a letter addressed to their families saying that ‘secularism is not a constraint, it is a liberty’.

If they showed up at school again wearing the dress there would be a ‘new dialogue’, the minister said.

On Monday evening, president Emmanuel Macron defended the controversial measure, saying there was a ‘minority’ in France who ‘hijack a religion and challenge the republic and secularism’, leading to the ‘worst consequences’ such as the murder three years ago of teacher Samuel Paty for showing Mohammed caricatures during a civics education class.

‘We cannot act as if the terrorist attack, the murder of Samuel Paty, had not happened,’ he said in an interview with Youtube channel HugoDecrypte.

An association representing Muslims has filed a motion with the State Council, France’s highest court for complaints against state authorities, for an injunction against the ban on the abaya and the qamis, its equivalent dress for men.

The Action for the Rights of Muslims (ADM) motion is to be examined later on Tuesday.

Abdallah Zekri, vice-president of the French Council for Muslim Worship, said last month the abaya ‘has never been a religious symbol’ and should not be banned.

He said the ban was yet another example of politicians using dress favoured by women and girls to attack some five million Muslims living in France.

‘I think the minister could have asked the opinion of religious leaders,’ said Zerkri.

‘For me, the abaya is not a religious dress, it is a form of fashion.

‘If you go to some stores, you find abayas. It’s a long and loose dress at the same time. It has nothing to do with religion.’

A law introduced in March 2004 banned ‘the wearing of signs or outfits by which students ostensibly show a religious affiliation’ in schools.

This includes large Christian crosses, Jewish kippas and Islamic headscarves.

Unlike headscarves, abayas occupied a grey area and had faced no outright ban until now.

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Gabon’s BREAKING:Military Leader Sworn In As President

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Gen. Brice Clotaire Oligui Nguema

Gabon ‘s new military leader was sworn in as the head of state Monday less than a week after ousting the president whose family had ruled the Central African nation for more than five decades.

Gen. Brice Clotaire Oligui Nguema, took the oath in the presidential palace in front of a packed, boisterous room of government officials, military and local leaders in Gabon’s capital, Libreville. Oligui is a cousin of the ousted President Ali Bongo Ondimba, served as a bodyguard to his late father and is head of the republican guard, an elite military unit.

Speaking to applause and standing ovations Monday, Oligui said the military had seized power without bloodshed and promised to return power to the people by organizing free, transparent and credible elections.

“With the new government, made up of experienced people, we’re going to give everyone a chance to hope,” he said.

.AP

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BREAKING: Gabonese Military Officers Sack President

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President Ali Bongo

Senior Gabonese military officers appeared on national television to announce they have taken power.

The group of 12 officers made the announcement shortly after Gabon’s election body reported early on Wednesday morning that President Ali Bongo had won a third term in office.

After observing “irresponsible, unpredictable governance resulting in a continuing deterioration in social cohesion that risks leading the country into chaos… we have decided to defend peace by putting an end to the current regime”, one of the soldiers said, speaking on the Gabon 24 TV channel.

There was no immediate comment from the Gabon government, the Reuters news agency reported.

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