If any of you have been following the Ray Rice scandal, you know the Minnesota Vikings player was recently reinstated after his suspension which was due to a video released of him physically abusing his now wife. I wrote a blog post earlier going into further detail on this if you’d like to check it out. To summarize what happened, Rice punched his fiance in the face, knocking her unconscious, then dragged her out of the elevator. And now his wife finally speaks up in an interview with Today.
In this interview, we see her defending her husband relentlessly. She became the face of domestic violence in this country when this tape came out. And the way she is handling it I would argue is just not telling women to be strong. This was an opportunity to make a difference in how we see domestic violence and women not being victims; she didn't take this opportunity. She says “I’m not going to sit there in silence and let something happen to me.” But that is essentially what she was doing. She was defending him by staying silent this whole time (the incident happened 10 months ago).
She continues to advocate for his supposedly good character when she says that the leaked video “didn’t make [her] rethink her relationship” and that she “knew [their] relationship wouldn’t be over.” She did a lot of the apologizing in a public apology Rice and her recently held; she said she was sorry for the “part she played in this.” She admitted the public apologies were not her idea exactly; someone at the Ravens “suggested” she do this and gave her and her husband a “general script” of what to say. It was a publicity stunt, which she acknowledged. Had the Ravens not urged her to do the press conference, she would not have been there, so she says.
Another concern Ray Rice apologized to the Ravens team and fans in this press conference...and not to his wife (the one who suffered from physical and emotional harm that night). Football seems to be the main priority in his mind. I think it would be devastating to see an NFL team pick him up for another season. We can learn from this whole incident if we can see how Rice’s case is played out. Domestic violence is never okay; there needs to be consequences. Standing behind her husband during all of this shouldn’t be rewarded in my opinion.
I think that Janay Rice, his wife, is making a horribly wrong decision to stay with her husband. She is letting the Raven's publicity team tell her what to do, but what she needs to do is move on. Her husband is more focused on how the public views him (how he only apologized to Raven's fans and his team), rather than righting the wrong that he caused. For her future mental and physical health, she needs to realize that her husband is not a good man, and she needs to leave him.
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