Author Alice Sebold apologises to man wrongly jailed for raping her

Exactly this. No doubt she was admired for her bravery in publishing such a raw memoir at the time. But no one demanded this book, she got it wrong, he suffered and so she should make full reparations. (I have no doubt she, and her husband, can create another NYT Bestseller about this new chapter.)

This,

if she didn’t know... as in 1000% sure she shouldn’t have picked him out... she did... now may she face the consequences.

Everyone's memory is unreliable. Ban memoirs! Burn existing memoirs!

Victims are not the judges, prosecutors, police, defense or juries in criminal cases, they are merely witnesses.

People with no experience of court have an idealised notion of how it works. The victims words are taken with all the other evidence presented. By design... because we know that victims don't remember things well and are traumatised.

That genuinely frustrated me too. I wasn't ever accused of a false rape allegation, thank hell. But I was accused of something that nearly got me evicted. (Someone accused me of noise pollution, despite the accuser going on drinking binges, every few days, and screaming and shouting abuse at all hours of the morning.) No amount of witnesses, it seemed, would convince my landlord that I wasn't the problem. I took recordings of the person yelling, audio recordings of my place at night, nightly, to prove how it wasn't me that was causing the issue.

Finally had to go get legal advice. (This, despite the accuser being evicted, and no further complaints close to a year later).

I saw someone else (male) talking about how he was in an abusive relationship (with a woman) who gave him all sorts of abuse. Then made accusations towards him to people. He then proceeded to tell people 'believe women'.

IF people had 'believed women', he'd have been locked up in prison. Folks jumped on the 'Amber Heard is a victim' bandwagon... and then more and more details came out about Johnny Depp, and the abuse he suffered... and there were lots of apologies on twitter. They are useless to him. His name's been dragged through the mud.

#Ibelieveher

That'll be it then. She was raped by a black guy and he was the only black guy in the court. She wasn't going to identify one of the white guys in there as her attacker. It could only have been the black man.

I assume that was her logic.

I wouldn't have thought "beyond reasonable doubt" is satisfied by a hair and a lineup. The real issue here is the adversarial nature of the attorney general/prosecution in the us. They honestly don't care if they find the truth, their job is to get a conviction. That seems like the problem to me.

'You've never experienced this, therefore you don't deserve an opinion'... gimme a break. Really, that's just ridiculous. That's like saying 'You've never murdered someone, so you can't say murder is wrong'.

She told quite a few lies, including allegations that he'd hired someone to hurt a friend. That was completely of her own doing. Again, I genuinely believe she was raped. That's not in question. No doubt in my mind.

But she admitted, in her own book, to lying under oath. She didn't believe it was him, even picking the wrong person initially, and having doubts.

As for bringing up her sexual past... by her own account, there wasn't any sexual partners. Her first sexual encounter was a rape. That's a horrifying thing to think of, but that's sadly what happened.

https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/features/alice-sebold-rape-and-redemption-107713.html

There's an Oscar winning documentary called 'Murder on a Sunday morning'. It concerns a black teenager falsely accused of a robbery and murder. The police are pushing for a conviction, even bullying( nay torturing) the young guy into giving and signing a false confession. Lawyers fight to prevent his conviction. The police officers (diverse, including one black officer, who, by all accounts, was the worst. Literally punched the kid in the gut and said ''N-words' like you give us all a bad name') were out to get a conviction, despite him not looking anything like the accused (the correct person is finally tracked down and arrested. He makes an appearance at the end of the doc.)

Even the husband of the victim is pushing for this teen to be the person-he's angry, wants someone to pay, despite him being innocent and not matching his own description that was given to the police. (For example, the clothing of the accused is a blank, tee-shirt. Whilst the person he claims shot his wife was wearing a very colourful, graffiti-like font tee-shirt.)

The reason I bring up this documentary is because, frankly, two wrongs do not make a right. Ms Sebold was clearly wronged. But sending the wrong man to prison was not making it right (especially when she doubted he was the right person). And he still would be labelled as a sexual predator if not for someone doing the incredibly decent thing of looking into the case after finding discrepancies. They put their own money forward. They weren't going to profit from this (in fact, they lost money by doing this.). If they had gotten back the same result (as in he was guilty, as more evidence was unearthed) I'd be saying the same thing. Very decent of him to do-in that he now confirmed it was true, and thus Sebold was left with no doubts.

Instead the case has gone cold. We know this guy is innocent, now. And all evidence relating to the case (including the rape kit) has been destroyed. As have the records. The real rapist, potentially, remains at large. Or, he may have raped other women, and served time for this. We don't know.

And contrary to your opinion, I do genuinely pity her too. She never got justice. The man who violated her walked free. For all she knows she walked past him every day for the rest of her time in Syracuse. That's a horrifying thing to imagine.

You are asking questions that you already know the answer to, and you yourself answering said questions. Why?

She lied following the trial in her book,so she profited off lias. The prosecution are of course to blame, but I'm talking about actions after the trial, and the fact that she lied under oath.

I've got no pitchforks out. I dislike somebody profiting off lies.

As the poster above said: 'She told quite a few lies, including allegations that he'd hired someone to hurt a friend. That was completely of her own doing.' You have yet to comment on this aspect.

Do we know she made this stuff up, and it wasn't misinformation fed to her to encourage the prosecution?

For some reason I thought you mind actually be in favour of giving people the benefit of the doubt :)

She may have been wrong in court but noone is suggesting it was deliberate attempt to deceive. No idea if she has made any statement since he was exonerated