As the latest school year comes to a close, another book has landed on Utah’s growing list of titles banned from all public schools in the state: “Lucky” by Alice Sebold.
Sebold’s 1999 memoir chronicles her recovery after being raped and beaten when she was an 18-year-old college freshman at Syracuse University. In the autobiography, she details how she navigated her survival as she fought to bring her alleged attacker to justice.
Three decades after “Lucky” debuted, a New York judge exonerated the man convicted of raping Sebold, Syracuse.com reported.
The court determined there were flaws with the 1982 arrest and prosecution of suspect Anthony Broadwater. The case relied on a microscopic hair analysis that has since been deemed “junk science” by the U.S. Department of Justice, PBS reported in 2021.
In a statement to the Associated Press that same year, Sebold apologized:
“As a traumatized 18-year-old rape victim, I chose to put my faith in the American legal system,” Sebold wrote. “My goal in 1982 was justice — not to perpetuate injustice. And certainly not to forever, and irreparably, alter a young man’s life by the very crime that had altered mine.”
Broadwater spent nearly 17 years years in prison. After he was released in 1998, he was ordered to remain on New York’s sex offender registry. The state agreed to pay Broadwater $5.5 million in 2023 as part of a settlement for the wrongful conviction, according to CBS.
Read the full article by Carmen Nesbitt at sltrib.com.
This article is published through the Utah News Collaborative, a partnership of news organizations in Utah that aims to inform readers across the state.