Editorial

Ray Rice's behavior offers a teachable moment

Posted

If the National Football League’s indefinite suspension of Baltimore Ravens star Ray Rice for his knock-out punch of his then fiancée, Janay Palmer, has any positive side, it’s the enhanced public awareness of domestic violence.

Thanks to the videos of Rice’s brutal act in February in an Atlantic City hotel elevator, the world has seen what millions of women experience all too often. Had there been no video evidence, who knows whether celebrity privilege or the typical he-said-she-agrees-with-what-he-said cover-up would have made the case disappear.

Indeed, statements made by Palmer, who married Rice after this brutality, express not anger at her attacker but resentment at the press for invading the couple’s privacy. Without the latest video of the punch Rice threw, his punishment may have ended with his original two-game suspension.

Karen Crouse wrote in The New York Times last week that professional athletes are seldom punished for off-field violence. “Brett Myers, a pitcher for the Philadelphia Phillies, was charged with assaulting his wife on a Boston street in 2006 after witnesses said he struck her in the face and pulled her hair,” Crouse wrote. “The Phillies put him on the mound as their starting pitcher about 36 hours later.

“Last October,” Crouse continued, “the goaltender Semyon Varlamov of the National Hockey League’s Colorado Avalanche was arrested after his girlfriend told the police he had kicked her to the floor and stomped on her chest. After spending the night in jail, Varlamov was back in goal the next game.

“In late August,” the article went on, “defensive lineman Ray McDonald of the National Football League’s San Francisco 49ers was arrested after an altercation with his pregnant fiancée, who the police said had visible injuries. He started in the 49ers’ season-opening victory Sunday.”

But now that Rice’s violence off the field is out there for all to see, turning the presumption of innocence into the obviousness of guilt, the case offers several useful lessons.

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