He was unjustly imprisoned for 16 years. An American writer apologizes to a man she accused of raping her

American writer Alice Siebold has apologized to a man she wrongly accused of raping her and sent him to 16 years in prison before being finally acquitted last week.

 "I want to say to Anthony Broadwater I'm so sorry for what I went through," Alice Sebold wrote in a post on Medium.

According to the British Broadcasting Corporation «BBC».

Anthony Broadwater, 61, has spent 16 years behind bars after being convicted of raping Siebold in 1982, although he has maintained his innocence.

In her memoirs, published in 1999, Siebold recounts that she was raped in 1981 on the campus of Syracuse University in New York State, where she was studying, and reported the assault to the police.

Five months later, Broadwater was arrested after Alice saw him walking down a street and thought he was the culprit and alerted the police.

"I am especially sorry for the fact that the life you could have lived was unfairly stolen from you, and I know that no apology can change what happened to you," Siebold added.

"I am grateful that Broadwater was eventually acquitted, but the point here is that 40 years ago there was another young black man who was harmed by our flawed justice system."

The New York State Supreme Court acquitted Anthony Broadwater on November 23.

According to the New York Times, his lawyers, who have worked in recent years to prove his innocence, said the verdict was based solely on the fact that Sebold had said Broadwater was the attacker based on a criminal identification technology discredited today.

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