In 1989, a young woman was brutally gang raped – she suffered two skull fractures and brain damage - in Central Park, New York. Six black and Hispanic teenagers were charged and five were eventually convicted on the basis of their videotaped confessions. As per a news report at the time, in videotaped and written statements to the police, “the teen-agers described how they hunted the woman, chased her down a path, beat her with a lead pipe, a brick and rocks, stripped her clothes and then held her down while at least four of them raped her”. The case dominated headlines and the woman became world famous as the “central park jogger”. Frank Sinatra sent her roses while she was recuperating in the hospital. A year later when the woman, an investment banker, returned to work, the mayor of the city called her inspirational, saying, ''despite tremendous odds, she is rebuilding her life. What a human life can do, a human society can do as well”. In 1991, while sentencing the last defendant, Steven Lopez, the judge regretted that he was prevented by law from imposing a tougher penalty on "one of the most vicious" of the six youth charged, and that his sentencing was "the final chapter of a cowardly attack that will continue to live in the hearts and minds of New Yorkers."
The Vilification of Ram Singh
The Vilification of Ram Singh
The Vilification of Ram Singh
In 1989, a young woman was brutally gang raped – she suffered two skull fractures and brain damage - in Central Park, New York. Six black and Hispanic teenagers were charged and five were eventually convicted on the basis of their videotaped confessions. As per a news report at the time, in videotaped and written statements to the police, “the teen-agers described how they hunted the woman, chased her down a path, beat her with a lead pipe, a brick and rocks, stripped her clothes and then held her down while at least four of them raped her”. The case dominated headlines and the woman became world famous as the “central park jogger”. Frank Sinatra sent her roses while she was recuperating in the hospital. A year later when the woman, an investment banker, returned to work, the mayor of the city called her inspirational, saying, ''despite tremendous odds, she is rebuilding her life. What a human life can do, a human society can do as well”. In 1991, while sentencing the last defendant, Steven Lopez, the judge regretted that he was prevented by law from imposing a tougher penalty on "one of the most vicious" of the six youth charged, and that his sentencing was "the final chapter of a cowardly attack that will continue to live in the hearts and minds of New Yorkers."