This is part of what's on Wikipedia under Mark Wahlberg:
"At 16, Wahlberg approached a middle-aged Vietnamese man named Thanh Lam on the street, and using a large wooden stick, bashed him over the head until he was knocked unconscious while calling him a "Vietnam fucking shit". That same day, Wahlberg also attacked a second Vietnamese man named Hoa "Johnny" Trinh, sucker punching him in the eye. According to court documents regarding these crimes, when Wahlberg was arrested later that night and returned to the scene of the first assault, he stated to police officers: "You don't have to let him identify me, I'll tell you now that's the mother-fucker whose head I split open."[14] Investigators also noted that Wahlberg "made numerous unsolicited racial statements about 'gooks' and 'slant-eyed gooks'.[15][16]
For these crimes, Wahlberg was charged with attempted murder, pleaded guilty to assault, and was sentenced to two years in Suffolk County Deer Island House of Correction. He ultimately served only 45 days of his sentence,[15][17] but carries a permanent felony record. Wahlberg believed he had left Trinh permanently blind in one eye.[13][15][16] Trinh said in December 2014 that he had already lost that eye during the Vietnam War, and did not know the identity of his assailant prior to being contacted by the media.[18]
In another incident, then 21-year-old Wahlberg fractured the jaw of a neighbor in an unprovoked attack.[19] Court documents state that in 1992, Wahlberg "without provocation or cause, viciously and repeatedly kicked" a man named Robert D. Crehan in the face and jaw while another man named Derek McCall held Crehan down on the ground.[20]
Commenting in 2006 on his past crimes, Wahlberg stated: "I did a lot of things that I regret, and I have certainly paid for my mistakes." He said the right thing to do would be to try to find the blinded man and make amends, and admitted he has not done so, but added that he was no longer burdened by guilt: "You have to go and ask for forgiveness and it wasn't until I really started doing good and doing right by other people, as well as myself, that I really started to feel that guilt go away. So I don't have a problem going to sleep at night. I feel good when I wake up in the morning."[17] In 2016, Wahlberg said he'd met Trinh and apologized for his "horrific acts".[21]
After prison, Wahlberg decided to improve his behavior. Of this he has said,
As soon as I began that life of crime, there was always a voice in my head telling me I was going to end up in jail. Three of my brothers had done time. My sister went to prison so many times I lost count. Finally I was there, locked up with the kind of guys I'd always wanted to be like. Now I'd earned my stripes and I was just like them, and I realized it wasn't what I wanted at all. I'd ended up in the worst place I could possibly imagine and I never wanted to go back. First of all, I had to learn to stay on the straight and narrow.[22]
Wahlberg first relied on the guidance of his parish priest to turn his back on crime. He told his street gang that he was leaving them and had "some serious fights" with them over it.[22]
On November 26, 2014, Wahlberg filed an application in Massachusetts requesting a full and unconditional pardon[23] of his prior convictions.[24] His pardon application engendered some controversy.[15] According to the BBC, the debate about his suitability for a pardon raised "difficult issues, with the arguments on both sides being far-reaching and complex".[25] One of Wahlberg's victims, Trinh, pledged in December 2014 to make a written statement supporting a pardon.[18] Kristyn Atwood, one of the African-American children attacked by Wahlberg, spoke out against the pardon in 2015, saying "a racist will always be a racist".[26] In September 2016, Wahlberg's pardon petition was closed after he failed to answer a request from the pardon board as to whether he wanted it to remain open.[27]"
