19th Dec 2002
Wilding Boys Go Free
So, the judge in the infamous “Central Park Jogger” case freed the five men who, as boys, were sentenced apparently erroneously for raping and viciously beating a female jogger 13 years ago. I was living in NYC at the time of the case. It was the biggest crime story of the decade, summing up all the fears people had about living it what was then a very dangerous city.
The whole thing is hard to fathom now. So they were innocent? Seems like the police and DA aren’t willing to precisely say that (even though another unrelated guy has confessed, whose DNA also happens to match crime-scene evidence). As far as I can tell, the court has just annulled the convictions, they’re free, no questions, no apologies, whatever. The judge did wish them a Merry Christmas, I saw on a TV news clilp.
And what about that terrible word “wilding” that entered our vocabulary (sort of) as a result of this case, which the teenagers alledgedly used (during their “confessions”) to jauntily describe their seemingly horrific crime spree. What was the word? Nothing more than a hoax perpetuated by the cops to make them look like monsters? Something the kids said which the cops misunderstood and fed to the media, which delightedly ran with? I remember back at the time people in the black community suggested that the police had made up the word, as no one had ever heard it used before or since in any other context. But back in 1989, we were told that “wilding” was the latest urban fad, a la Clockwork Orange. Certainly made for such tantilizing headlines. The media had a field day with it. Now, I suppose we’ll never know. Or, on second thought, we probably will as soon as the now free young men write their books on the whole ordeal.
All I can say is NYC is a different city today in so many ways, almost all for the better (save, obviously, the whole Sept. 11 thing).
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