“That Guy is Still Out There”
July 1, 2026 at 09:30PMA few years ago, national news outlets published reports of an apology from Alice Sebold, acclaimed author of The Lovely Bones, to a man named Anthony Broadwater, who had been wrongly convicted for allegedly raping Sebold while she was a Syracuse University student. Now, Joaquin Sapien reveals the numerous failings by law enforcement, lawyers, and university officials that prolonged a life-changing injustice. Over two-and-a-half years, Sapien spoke with Sebold and Broadwater and raised thousands of pages of documents, to piece together a maddening account of a sustained sexual-assault crisis that was mishandled, tamped down, and overlooked.
What’s clear is that no part of the system in Syracuse at the time could be depended on. Police brushed off rapes. Prosecutors bungled confessions or were defeated at trial. Judges overlooked irregularities. And one of the most powerful institutions in the city, Syracuse University, seemed more interested in suppressing news of a rape epidemic than solving it. There were police reports of sexual assaults near the campus marked “no press.” A former detective testified that the files were marked that way at the university’s request.
from Longreads https://longreads.com/2026/07/01/alice-sebold-anthony-broadwater-rape-investigation/
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