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PurpleAntifreeze t1_jdykcqi wrote

Reply to comment by jollybumpkin in N.Y. to pay $5.5 million to man exonerated in writer Alice Sebold rape case by OutsideObserver2

Why wouldn’t she blame the faulty legal system more than herself? Seriously, the victim blaming overtones here are disgusting. She was told they had scientific proof it was him - that’s not her fault.

And it’s a horrifying story from both of their perspectives there McNasty. Not just his. First she was brutally raped and then she was deceived into helping convict an innocent man. How is it not also horrifying for her?

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Landeyda t1_jdyld8z wrote

Because she ID'ed him and testified to it. That's being left out.

> “Is there any doubt in your mind, Miss Sebold, that the person that you saw on Marshall Street is the person who attacked you on May 8 in Thornden Park?” the prosecutor asked. > > “No doubt whatsoever.”

Blame goes to the State for all its bullshit, but she, on the stand, said that Broadwater was the one to do it under oath.

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ddottay t1_jdyokzv wrote

She also picked someone else in the police lineup and then when she was told she picked the “wrong person” she changed her identification.

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stolenfires t1_jdyugsw wrote

That's so fucked up. That could have been the actual rapist; who walked free and probably raped more women. It's victims all the way down.

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LazyQuest t1_jdzcoa7 wrote

That's not how line ups work lol, the other people in it are not suspects

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bros402 t1_jdymblk wrote

cops do shit all the time to implant false memories

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woundedbearhair t1_jdyn1ra wrote

And speaking of discredited techniques, witness IDs are the least reliable method of identifying a suspect unless the suspect confessed to them and it’s marred by the trauma the witness is dealing with from the event. Cops manipulate witnesses all the time to arrive at the conclusion they are aiming for.

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jollybumpkin t1_jdytjje wrote

> she, on the stand, said that Broadwater was the one to do it under oath.

That's a terrible mistake she will have to live with for the rest of her life. She clearly regrets it.

She was very young and traumatized by an awful sexual assault. You'd have to read Lucky to understand how bad it was.

I'm not trying to defend her or excuse her mistake. I'm not ready to condemn her, either. Life is hard. Life is complicated.

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DigitalSteven1 t1_jdyz7if wrote

I wouldn't call that a mistake... More like lying under oath and putting an innocent man behind bars.

​

Of course, the entire situation is fucked, and all points back to the corruption in the justice system. Coercing a rape victim to identify an innocent is super fucked. The real people that should be behind bars are the ones that practically forced her to do that.

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jollybumpkin t1_jdz00y1 wrote

Now you're just being antagonistic.

When she testified, she had the mistaken belief that he was the perpetrator. Was this foolish? Perhaps. Was she mixed up? Yes, probably. Was it racism? Probably not. There was never much doubt that the perpetrator was black. It just wasn't Broadwater.

But there's no reason to believe she testified maliciously. If that were true, she wouldn't have publicly apologized, recently.

When she wrote her book about the assault, Broadwater was already tried, convicted and locked up. She used a pseudonym for Broadwater, but she repeatedly wrote about the guy who was caught and prosecuted. She wrote he was the one who did it. She seems to have believed it, until, much later, she better understood what had happened and how the police improperly influenced her testimony.

Lucky did not sell well. After she published Lovely Bones, the public got interested in her previous book, Lucky, and started to buy it. By then, Broadwater had been locked up for years.

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global_scamartist t1_jdz4o88 wrote

And lucky was about to be made into a Netflix movie which got cancelled when the original producer did his own research and hired a private investigator to look into the case. That’s how broadwater got exonerated.

The producer is now making a movie called unlucky about how that process went.

“The new film will be titled Unlucky, and is being produced by Timothy Mucciante — who, during his previous tenure as an executive producer on a film adaptation of Lucky, found inconsistencies in Sebold's account that eventually led to Broadwater's exoneration.

In the op-ed, Mucciante detailed that one of the things that made him start to question the case was Sebold's own account of comments made to her by an assistant district attorney after she initially identified a man other than Broadwater in the police lineup (later, in the trial, she did identify Broadwater as her rapist, which together with a now-discredited junk science known as "microscopic hair analysis" secured his conviction). He said that a script rewrite that changed the race of Sebold's assailant in the film to a white man (Broadwater is Black) also led to keeping his ‘unease with aspects of the book fresh in mind.’”

So basically she changed her account from identifying broadwater and was potentially ok with the script changing the assailant to a white man. If it was for a sale to Netflix then it’s at the least, still disingenuous and shady. At the worst it’s selling her trauma to wrongfully accuse a man for decades and trying to do it until Mucciante caught on. This is all publicly available information. I’m not the source - it’s available everywhere.

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QuintoBlanco t1_je4wqu3 wrote

>There was never much doubt that the perpetrator was black. It just wasn't Broadwater.

Well, there is the problem.

Broadwater only became a suspect because Alice Sebold falsely accused him.

The only reason the police was convinced Broadwater was the rapist, was that Sebold initially was sure he was the man who raped her.

She was raped by a black man, and accused another black man.

I just want to make it clear that she did not accuse Broadwater after the police had arrested him, or pointed him out to Sebold.

She accused a black man she had met on the street.

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humanregularbeing t1_je3x9pt wrote

Don't know anything about this case, am only passing through. But "was it racism probably not there was never much doubt that the perpetrator was black it just wasn't Broadwater" is a bit messed up. Just reread it.

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QuintoBlanco t1_je4w2r6 wrote

>the victim blaming overtones

She was not the victim in relationship to Anthony Broadwater.

She was not raped by Anthony Broadwater and she is the one who identified him as her rapist after she met him on the street.

When she met Anthony Broadwater, the police wasn't there to deceive her.

She was sure Anthony Broadwater raped her (without being prompted by the police), then, weeks later, could not identify him.

It was only then that the police convinced her that Anthony Broadwater was the rapist.

I'm not saying this to condemn Alice Sebold, she made a terrible mistake when she was a traumatized 18-year-old.

But it is important to get the facts right: Anthony Broadwater became a suspect because Alice Sebold falsely accused him.

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global_scamartist t1_je8vcuo wrote

Because she told the probation board that applying the maximum sentence to Broadwater would be great political fodder for them (described in her memoir). Why mention the political gain? That’s manipulative in that she encouraged the maximum sentence and the “political” aspect could be anything from advancing careers or appeasing public sentiment (aka racial bias towards black men) which are secondary to the case. If she wanted Justice she could have just stuck to Justice - not leverage politics. It mirrors her lack of integrity in lying in the memoir about Broadwater having a criminal history and sending a hit man to kill her friend which she wrote at 36, and had plenty of time to fat check. The lies made the rapist seem more dramatic and threatening, presumably to sell to the publisher. Further changes to reality in the Netflix script (that she was presumably ok with) from a black perpetrator to white paints her as a shrewd businesswoman willing to leverage her trauma into changing narratives as long as it “sold.” That’s on the back of Broadwater that she was making millions on and a writing career. Lastly her apology never takes accountability for her involvement and her lies about him in the memoir.

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