Mark Wahlberg may not be able to escape his past. The actor, and former violent juvenile delinquent, is seeking a pardon for crimes he committed years ago, but one of his victims says his request should not be granted.
"I don't think he should get a pardon," Kristyn Atwood said simply in an interview with the Associated Press.
Atwood, 38, came into contact with Wahlberg in 1986 on a beach near Boston when she was in the fourth grade. Then involved with drugs and criminal activity, the Boston-born star and his group of friends allegedly threw rocks at Atwood and her African-American classmates, chasing them as they hurled racial slurs at the students.
"I don't really care who he is," Atwood continued. "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."
News broke last month that the Entourage actor, 43, applied to the Massachusetts Board of Pardons for an expunging of his lengthy record.
"I am deeply sorry for the actions that I took," Wahlberg wrote in said application. "Since that time, I have dedicated myself to becoming a better person and citizen so that I can be a role model to my children and others."
Now the father of four children with wife Rhea Durham, Wahlberg was granted a personal pardon from one of his victims this past December. In another racially charged incident in 1988, the actor beat up a Vietnamese man named Johnny Trinh to the point that he thought he had blinded the victim, and spent 45 days in jail as a result. Wahlberg began his road to fame soon after, introducing Marky Mark and the Funky Bunch in 1991 and nabbing his first acting role in 1993.
Trinh told the Daily Mail last month that he was already blind in the eye Wahlberg injured, after suffering during the Vietnam War. "I was not blinded by Mark Wahlberg," he told the publication. "He did hurt me, but my left eye was already gone. He was not responsible for that."
"I would like to see him get a pardon," Trinh added. "He should not have the crime hanging over him any longer… He paid for his crime when he went to prison. I am not saying that it did not hurt when he punched me in the face, but it was a long time ago… He has grown up now. I am sure he has his own family and is a responsible man."
