
Mark Wahlberg
By Philip Marcelo and Rodrique Ngowi
Associated Press
BOSTON (AP) — A victim of one of actor Mark Wahlberg’s racially motivated attacks as a teenage delinquent in racially divided Boston in the 1980s insists he shouldn’t be granted a pardon for his crimes.
Kristyn Atwood was among a group of mostly black fourth-grade students on a field trip to the beach in 1986 when Wahlberg and his white friends began hurling rocks and shouting racial epithets as they chased them down the street.
“I don’t think he should get a pardon,’’ Atwood, now 38 and living in Georgia, said in an interview with The Associated Press.
“I don’t really care who he is. It doesn’t make him an exception. If you’re a racist, you’re always going to be a racist. And for him to want to erase it, I just think it’s wrong,’’ she said.
The 43-year-old former rapper, Calvin Klein model, and “Boogie Nights’’ actor wants official forgiveness for a separate, more severe attack in 1988, in which he assaulted two Vietnamese men while trying to steal beer. That attack sent one of the men to the hospital and landed Wahlberg in prison.
Wahlberg, in a pardon application filed in November and pending before the state parole board, acknowledges he was a teenage delinquent mixed up in drugs, alcohol, and the wrong crowd. He points to his ensuing successful acting career, restaurant ventures, and philanthropic work with inner city youths as evidence he’s turned his life around.
“I have apologized, many times,’’ he told the AP in December.
Court documents in the 1986 attack identify Wahlberg among a group of white boys who harassed the school group as they were leaving Savin Hill Beach in Dorchester, a mixed but racially divided Boston neighborhood that had seen tensions during the years the city was under court-ordered school integration.
The boys chased the black children down the street, repeatedly shouting “n—–’’ and hurling rocks until an ambulance driver intervened. Wahlberg was 15 at the time.
Atwood says she still bears a scar from getting hit by a rock. No one was seriously injured, but the attack left a lasting impression.
In 1988, Wahlberg, then 16, attacked two Vietnamese men while trying to steal beer near his Dorchester home.
According to the sentencing memorandum, he confronted Thanh Lam, a Vietnamese man, as he was getting out of his car with two cases of beer. Wahlberg called Lam a “Vietnam f—— s—’’ and beat him over the head with a wooden stick until Lam lost consciousness and the rod broke in two.
Documents say Wahlberg ran up to another Vietnamese man, Hoa Trinh, and asked for help hiding. After a police cruiser drove past, he punched Trinh in the eye. Later, he made crude remarks about Asians.
Wahlberg ultimately was convicted as an adult of two counts of assault and battery with a dangerous weapon, marijuana possession, and criminal contempt for violating the prior civil rights injunction. He was given a three-month prison sentence, of which he served about 45 days.
“It was a hate crime and that’s exactly what should be on his record forever,’’ Atwood said. (end)