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Trisha Meili (b. June 24, 1960), often described in the media as the Central Park Jogger, was the victim in a high-profile rape case in New York City in 1989.

The crime

On April 19, 1989, the 28-year-old investment banker was violently assaulted while jogging in New York City's Central Park. In addition to being raped, she was beaten near death—when found, she was suffering from deadly hypothermia and blood loss, and her skull had been fractured. The initial prognosis of her physicians was that she would die or remain in a permanent coma due to her injuries, but she recovered fully, with no memory of the event.

The crime, one of 3,254 rapes reported in New York that year, was unique in the level of public outrage it provoked. New York Governor Mario Cuomo told the New York Post, "This is the ultimate shriek of alarm."

According to a police investigation, the culprits were teenagers who would assault strangers, often in gangs, as part of an activity they called "wilding." April 19 was known to have been a night when wilding occurred. Five teenaged suspects were identified as the assailants, tried, and convicted in 1990. Four of the men involved confessed to the crime, but later questions involving possible coercion put those confessions into doubt. Nonetheless, the confessions were considered so damning that many were certain of the men's guilt. Yusef Salaam, one of the men convicted, allegedly referred to the assault as "fun," while others described the assault in graphic detail. No DNA evidence tied the suspects to the crime, so the prosecution's case rested almost entirely on the confessions.

A few were skeptical of the confessions, however. The Reverend Calvin O. Butts of the Abyssinian Baptist Church in Harlem told the New York Times, "The first thing you do in the United States of America when a white woman is raped is round up a bunch of black youths, and I think that's what happened here."

Convictions vacated

In 2002, convicted rapist and murderer Matias Reyes, serving a life sentence for other crimes but not, to that point, charged for this one, declared that he committed the assault, and that he acted alone. DNA evidence confirmed his participation in the crime. There had been no physical evidence to connect the other five men to the crime and their convictions were based on their confessions. Supporters of the five defendants claimed their confessions were coerced, while opponents proposed that Reyes participated in the crime with the other five men, or that he attacked Meili after they left the scene.

Based on Reyes' confession, and at the request of District Attorney Robert M. Morgenthau, New York state justice Charles J. Tejada vacated the convictions of five defendants on December 19, 2002. The decision was strongly opposed by Linda Fairstein who had overseen the original prosecution.

Four of the defendants, having been tried as juveniles, had received shorter prison sentences and had already been free at the time. One remained in jail convicted for a later, unrelated crime.

Identification by the media

Because of continuing stigma associated with being the victim of a sexual crime, and the trauma that victims of such crimes often face, the American media generally do not reveal the identity of sexual assault victims. Thus, Meili was often identified as the "Central Park Jogger". However, two newspapers, the City Sun and the Amsterdam News did release the jogger's name, as did WLIB radio, making her identity de facto public knowledge in New York. In 2003, Meili revealed her identity in an effort to help other victims and released a book I Am the Central Park Jogger ISBN 0-7432-4437-0

Contrary to normal police procedure, which stipulates that the names of "juvenile" suspects under the age of sixteen are also to be withheld, the names of the juveniles arrested in this case were released to the press before any of them had been formally arraigned or indicted, including one fourteen-year-old who was ultimately not charged.

External links

• Connor, Tracy (October 20, 2002) "48 hours: Twisting trail to teens' confessions". New York Daily News
• Michael F. Armstrong, et al. (January 27, 2003) "NYPD Review of the Central Park Jogger Case"
• Stix, Nicholas (January, 2003) “Justice Vacated in Central Park Jogger Case,” Middle American News
• Timothy Sullivan (1992). Unequal Verdicts: The Central Park Jogger Trials. New York: Simon & Schuster. ISBN 0-671-74237-X.
• Ryan, Nancy E. (December 5, 2002) "Affirmation in Response to Motion to Vacate Judgement of Conviction"
• Didion, Joan (January 17, 1991) "Sentimental Journeys". in The New York Review of Books, later collected in the book After Henry.
• "Central Park Revisited" New York Magazine.

• Crime victims
• 1960 births
• Living people