Some Of Mark Wahlberg’s Victims Don’t Want Him Pardoned
Published on January 20, 2015.Mark Wahlberg, 43, may be a celebrated Hollywood actor now, but the world is learning more and more about his troubled past as a delinquent teen in Boston during the 80’s.
Wahlberg filed a pardon application in November 2014 for an attack on two Vietnamese men in 1988 that landed him 45 days in jail, but victims from a separate attack in 1986 are against him receiving the pardon, even now.
“I don’t think he should get a pardon. I don’t really care who he is. It doesn’t make him any 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,” Krystn Atwood stated in an interview with the Associated Press.
Atwood, 38, was on a class trip in fourth grade with several other black students when Wahlberg, who was then 15, and his friends threw rocks at them and shouted racial slurs while chasing the young kids.
Meanwhile, the teacher on the trip thinks Wahlberg should get pardoned, “I believe in forgiveness. He was just a young kid – a punk- in the mean streets of Boston. He didn’t do it specifically because he was a bad kid. He was just a follower doing what the other kids were doing.”
As a result of the incident Wahlberg and his two friends were issued an injunction which basically warned them that another hate crime would land them in jail, which is what happened in 1988 after Wahlberg’s second incident with the Vietnamese men.
Wahlberg says he has changed, has apologized and points to his successful career and work with troubled youths as proof he has changed.
“I’ve been working very hard to correct a lot of mistakes that I made since the day I woke up and realized, ‘You know what? I need to be a leader instead of a follower.'”
Regardless of his efforts to change Atwood thinks that in no way justifies erasing his past, “It was a hate crime and that’s exactly what should be on his record forever.”
Also Check Out: 13 Popular Stars With Shocking Criminal Pasts
