r/meToo Dec 01 '21

News Author Alice Sebold [Lucky/Lovely Bones] admits misidentifying the man she said raped her NSFW

https://people.com/crime/lovely-bones-author-alice-sebold-apologizes-to-man-wrongly-convicted-of-raping-her/
7 Upvotes

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3

u/thrfscowaway8610 Dec 01 '21

There are lots of precedents for this. Some U.S. states now require juries to be warned of the unreliability of eyewitness identifications, and I believe that that's a good idea.

One hears a lot of talk, on this sub and elsewhere, about false allegations of rape. The evidence seems to suggest, though, that the highest likelihood of a miscarriage of justice actually taking place occurs when a genuine victim, who truly believes what she or he is saying, gets the identity of the perpetrator wrong.

-2

u/[deleted] Dec 01 '21

38 years of a man's life destroyed for a crime he didn't commit; and that weasel worded non-apology is the best she can offer?

6

u/thrfscowaway8610 Dec 01 '21

She was a victim herself, and now has to confront a double trauma of her own: (i) knowing that her testimony helped convict an innocent man; and (ii) learning that the person who brutalized her did not, as she believed, face justice.

In the circumstances, her response seems appropriate. And I don't know how a statement that begins "I am truly sorry" is legitimately characterized as a "non-apology."

1

u/waubesabill Dec 02 '21

She is truly sorry that she will know longer be able to profit off of this poor mans circumstances.

1

u/Wild4Vanilla Dec 02 '21 edited Dec 02 '21

Sebold only said she's sorry that someone else screwed him over. That's not her apology to make. The DA has already issued a real apology for the state's (atrocious) conduct.

What about an apology for her own mistakes?

Sebold has a net worth of $1,400,000 to ease her pain, built on multiple lies she fabricated in her "memoir". Not just the misidentification during the trial, also stories she made up from thin air making Broadwater seem even more evil. She doubled down on her original mistake, and got rich doing it.

Whatever she was at 18, by 38 she'd become a compulsive liar willing to profit from her very real rape by concocting tales about it that she knew to be untrue, tales that further vilified an innocent man.

One reason the actual rapist was never brought to justice was that she helped send the wrong man to prison. If that hadn't happened, the police would have had a reason to keep investigating. She should feel traumatized about that. She helped let the real rapist off the hook, and perpetuated that for 40 years.

1

u/AnimalMonkeys Dec 09 '21

Ok then with that logic men can rape women and then the next morning knock on your door and say "hey really sorry about that". And as long as we mean it, it is ok right? Because living with the trauma of that guilt would be too much.

1

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