ever since the release of Netflix's wildly popular miniseries when they see us the real life story of the so-called Central Park 5 has shot back into the spotlight the Central Park jogger case also known as the Central Park 5 case was a criminal case in the United States over the assault and rape of a white woman in Manhattan's Central Park on the 19th of April 1989 occurring at the same time as an unrelated string of other attacks in the park the same night the nature and location of the crime catapulted this case into the headline it's a brutal attack in Central Park the victim is now in critical condition at Metropolitan Hospital two skull fractures a significant loss of blood in advance the media and city leaders placed immense pressure on the judicial system to hold someone accountable the police soon arrested five black and Latino young men Kevin Richardson antrin McRae Raymond Santana Corey wise and Yusuf Salam scared and threatened they confessed that they touched or restrained the victim while one or more of the others assaulted her as the DNA evidence from semen found at the scene didn't match any of the five boys prosecutors relied solely on the initial interrogations but the five took back those statements saying they'd been coerced by police into giving false confessions in a 2016 interview with the guardian Salam said I would hear them beating up Corey wise in the Next Room they would come and look at me and say you realize you're next the fear made me feel really like I was not going to be able to make it out he said after two trials the five teenagers were found guilty of offenses including attempted murder rape assault and robbery and were convicted to 6 to 13 years in prison despite a lack of concrete evidence one young man later said he never spoke to his father again as his father told him to confess so the police could help him even though he told him he was innocent ultimately the scenarios turned to wrongfully convicted cases the boys served sentences of many years before the judicial system finally exonerated them after Matthias Reyes a convicted murderer and serial rapist confessed to the crime in 2002. in 2014 they were awarded a 41 million dollar settlement though the city of New York denied any wrongdoing in later years they spoke of their harrowing ordeals the trauma and abuse they suffered during the process and in prison and the toll being part of famous wrongful conviction cases still takes on them y'all don't really understand what we went through yeah I tried to do you dehumanize us as human beings but we still here we're strong nobody give us a chance for the people that believed in US I have four sisters and a mother would never do anything to a woman I was raised better than that that's right yeah it still hurts me emotionally now it feels great to have a voice because 89 we didn't have one all we wanted to tell y'all that we didn't do it we just wanted to put it into this chapter