Man Exonerated In Author Alice Sebold's Rape Will Get $5.5M: Reports

NEW YORK CITY — The man wrongfully convicted in the rape of "The Lovely Bones" author Alice Sebold will get $5.5 million, according to reports.

The settlement for Anthony Broadwater, 62, who spent 16 years in prison, still awaits a judge's signature, the New York Times first reported.

But the agreement appears to poised to close the book on a case that began in 1981, when then-Syracuse University freshman Sebold was raped in a park near campus, the report states.

Sebold, who wrote about the rape in her memoir "Lucky," had later identified Broadwater — a Black man — as her attacker after she passed him on the street, the Times reported. She was unsure about her identification, however, and Broadwater's attorneys later showed she had been tricked by prosecutors during a police lineup, according to the report.

After Broadwater's time in prison and eventual exoneration in 2021, Sebold publicly apologized to him.

"I am grateful that Mr. Broadwater has finally been vindicated, but the fact remains that 40 years ago, he became another young Black man brutalized by our flawed legal system," she wrote. "I will forever be sorry for what was done to him."

Broadwater has moved through a spate of temporary jobs since leaving prison, the Times reported. He hopes to buy a house with his partner in a rural area with his settlement, according to the report.

Read the full New York Times report here.