In Alice Sebold’s memoir, Lucky, she tells the story of her rape and her long journey to recovery. As a freshman in college, attending Syracuse University, Alice Sebold was brutally beaten in the campus’s park. Her assaulter dragged her across the lawn into a tunnel of an abandoned amphitheater and raped her. She had been a virgin. Alice Sebold went back to her dorm, where she contacted the police. She was rushed to the hospital, given several tests, and questioned by the cops. The cops had a tendency to drop rape cases due to the victims being unable to bare the strain of following through with the trial, but Ms. Sebold was different. She was utterly determined to find and jail her rapist. Alice Sebold insisted that people treated her differently after the rape. She did…show more content… Her story inspired the jury and judge, and Gregory Madison was found guilty. He was sentenced to the maximum amount of time allowed for the crime: twenty-five years in prison with the possibility of parole at eight and a half years. Alice Sebold now shifted her focus from the trial to her happiness. She tried to move on from the rape and stop seeing herself as a victim. She was a survivor and Madison was now off the streets. However, a short period of time later, Alice Sebold’s best friend, Lila, was raped in their apartment. Ms. Sebold blamed herself, but felt like she could help Lila through the difficulty due to her similar experience. Lila did not agree, and she stopped speaking to Alice Sebold. As a poetry major, Alice Sebold graduated from Syracuse University and became an English teacher at a college in New York. She claims that this is what saved her: being a teacher, listening to what her students had to say, and serving as a sort of therapist for them. Prior to her decision to become sober, Alice Sebold abused drugs – particularly heroine – and drank
