Recy Taylor was walking home from church nearly 70 years ago when a gang of white men raped her. She was 24 years old and married.

Two all-white, all-male grand juries refused to indict her alleged attackers.

On Monday, leaders in the rural Alabama town of Abbeville, where the attack occurred, apologized to Taylor. They acknowledge that her attackers escaped prosecution because of racism. They also admitted that police bungled the investigation.

Taylor, now 91 and living in Florida, could not attend the event because of poor health.

"What happened to my sister way back then ... couldn’t happen today," Robert Corbitt, Taylor's 74-year-old brother, was quoted by the Associated Press as saying at the news conference. "Boy, what a mess they made out of it. They tried to make her look like a whore and she was a Christian lady."

All of Taylor's alleged attackers are now thought to be dead.

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