Elected last December to the New York City Council, Yusef Salaam, 49, took office on Tuesday as the new representative of the Harlem district, 34 years after being wrongly convicted of the rape of a jogger in the case of the “Central Park Five”. A look back at his extraordinary journey.
Published on: 01/04/2024 – 2:41 p.m.
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He took an oath on the Koran which accompanied him throughout his years of detention. Wrongly convicted of rape in 1990 in the “Central Park Five” affair, Yusef Salaam officially took office on Tuesday, January 2, on the New York City Council, as representative of the Harlem district. “The circle is complete”, commented to the American daily The New York Times (NYT) Raymond Santanaalso convicted by mistake in the same case.
In the Democratic primary last summer, the father of six defeated both incumbent council members, including the candidate endorsed by New York City’s mayor, and won the district council seat in last November’s general election.
An extraordinary trajectory for this neophyte in politics. “I am not part of this world,” said this 49-year-old writer and speaker who wants to focus on the quality of public schools, access to housing and security. “Most people might think I’m all for ‘defunding’ [la police]but the truth is that we need[elle]”, he also declared.
According to the NYT, it was the Democratic leader of New York County, Keith Wright, who convinced him to run for office in the summer of 2022. Since his release from prison, Yusef Salaam had left New York for settle near Atlanta, thanks to the seven million dollars awarded by the American federal courts in 2014 in compensation for the seven years spent behind bars.
“The crime of the century”
The affair of the “Central Park Five”, which has since been the subject of a series broadcast on Netflix, dates back to April 19, 1989. That evening, Patricia “Trisha” Meili, a young 29-year-old white banker, was taking her daily jog in the large Manhattan park when she was violently attacked and raped. 80% drained of blood, the young woman was close to death when she was discovered by workers in a ditch. Intubated, suffering from 21 fractures, she spent seven weeks in hospital.
In 1989, New York City faced an unprecedented crime wave: crack cocaine spread in the streets and more than 3,200 rapes were recorded in the city. The police are on edge and must quickly find the culprit. The same evening, five African-American and Hispanic-American teenagers were arrested in New York in connection with a series of attacks on joggers. Despite testimonies that do not coincide with the crime scene where Patricia “Trisha” Meili was left for dead, the absence of DNA and eyewitnesses, the police manage to get them to confess to the rape. Often questioned in the absence of a lawyer, four of the five young people signed detailed confessions of the attack which they never committed. Yusef Salaam, then aged 15, narrowly escaped thanks to the intervention of his mother.
Immediately, the press and politicians went wild and spoke of the “savagery” of New York by gangs of young people. The New York Daily News headlines on its front page: “The prey of the wolf pack: a jogger comes close to death after being savagely attacked by a roaming gang.” A few weeks later, Donald Trump, then a real estate mogul, splits a long platform with populist accents where he attacks the city’s Democratic mayor, Ed Koch, by name: “Give us back the death penalty. Give us back our police!”
Put under pressure a few months before the municipal elections, the mayor would later admit in a documentary: “It was for everyone, not just for me, the crime of the century.”
Without bitterness
On August 18, 1990, the “Central Park Five” were sentenced to terms ranging from five to ten years in prison. Korey Wise, the oldest, is the only one to enter an adult prison, the other four are sent to a youth correctional center. The case rebounds 12 years later when Matias Reyes, confused by his DNA and already in prison for four rapes and the murder of a pregnant woman, confesses to being solely responsible for the Central Park rape. It was not until 2014 that the courts awarded $41 million in compensation to the five convicts.
Since this affair, Yusef Salaam became involved in the Innocence Project, an American NGO fighting against miscarriages of justice since 1992, of which he became a member of the board of directors. In 2016, President Barack Obama presented him with a Lifetime Achievement Award.
“I’m happy to have been very, very close to pain, and now that I have a voice, I know exactly what people are talking about,” he declared to the television channel New York 1, after his election. A sign that he has released all resentment despite his personal drama, his memoirs (published in 2021) are titled: “Better, Not Bitter”.
2024-01-04 13:41:56
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