Ray Rice case, including NFL punishment, highlights victims’ dilemma

There are many women like Janay Rice in Kansas City. Only, these women’s abusers aren’t caught on tape.

In fact, many of them aren’t caught at all.

There are many children in domestic-violence shelters, too — uprooted from the security of their homes in order to stay alive. Some are young boys who idolize athletes like Baltimore Ravens running back Ray Rice.

Rice was suspended for two games and fined $58,000 by the NFL on Thursday for violating the league’s personal-conduct policy. He was involved in an altercation with girlfriend-turned-wife Janay Rice in February that left her unconscious, and was caught by security cameras dragging her out of an Atlantic City casino elevator.

Details of the punishment spurred instant criticism. After all, the NFL has meted out tougher punishment to pot smokers, drunk drivers and prescription-drug abusers.

But domestic violence toward women isn’t just an NFL problem. It’s a societal problem that’s gained renewed attention thanks to a sports league so valued by American fans.

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In April, former University of Missouri wide receiver Dorial Green-Beckham allegedly forced his way into an apartment and shoved a woman down a flight of stairs.

Green-Beckham was not arrested because the alleged victims in the incident, fearful of the reaction that prosecution might bring to their doorstep, declined to press charges.

The Columbia Police Department presented troubling details from that night in its incident report. Within the report was a text message from Green-Beckham’s girlfriend at the time saying Green-Beckham “drug me out by my neck and hurt me.”

The woman later amended that statement by telling police she was not injured. Eyewitnesses saw Green-Beckham speed away from the scene, and some of his teammates begged them not to call the police.

Green-Beckham was never charged with a crime but was released from the Missouri football team on April 11. He has since transferred to Oklahoma.

“We’re going to embrace DGB and hopefully guide him and lead him on the right path,” Oklahoma coach Bob Stoops told the Tulsa World this week. “I think he’ll be a great player for us.”

Meanwhile, those women remain silent.

***

She is 20 years old. A native of the Kansas City area, she is an avid Chiefs fan. A fan of all sports, really.

Sometimes, she is one of the thousands of women who crowd into Arrowhead Stadium for a game.

She’s also part of a more meaningful statistic: One in four women will experience dating or domestic violence in her liftime, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

This particular woman, who wanted to remain anonymous, tells her story to help women like her.

She hasn’t told her parents about that July night in 2009, and if she has anything to say about it, they’ll never find out. Only a handful of friends know.

She and the boy were close friends during their freshman year in high school. One night, he asked her to meet him in the parking lot behind their high school. She agreed. When she arrived, she remained in her car, he in his car.

“Get into my car,” he said. “So it won’t be awkward whenever we talk.”

She thought nothing of the request at the time. She trusted him. In hindsight, she trusted him too much. He locked the door and forced himself on her.

“I tried getting him off of me, but with him being a linebacker for the football team, he was too strong,” she says.

She was able to reach up and unlock the car door, tumbling out onto the pavement in desperation. He got out of his car, followed her to her car, pulled on her ponytail and forced her head back.

She never filed a police report (“I just didn’t want to put myself through all of that,” she says now), and walked away without bruises or scars.

Not on the surface, anyway.

“I sped off bawling my eyes out,” she says. “Whenever I start to get remotely close to a guy, or get into a relationship, I fear that it’s gonna happen all over again.”

***

The July 2009 incident isn’t so unlike the 6,000 cases of violent crime being dealt with at any given time in Kansas City.

About half of those, says Monica Mayberry, advocacy coordinator at the Rose Brooks Center and member of the Kansas City Police Department’s domestic violence unit, are domestic violence situations.

“Brand new people every day,” Mayberry says. “And the ones who don’t make the headlines are close to dying if not almost dead. And those get no attention. It’s the sensational ones that get the news every day. And the ones who don’t hit the news (involve) men who have class, power and control and are not prosecuted.”

In the state of Missouri, domestic violence is a victimless crime of prosecution, which means law enforcement can arrest abusers without prosecution by the victim if they have probable cause.

Whether the victim presses charges or not doesn’t necessarily matter.

“As far as I’m concerned, it’s a societal view on violence against women,” Mayberry says. “It’s not just football, although that’s what in the headlines right now.”

Mayberry’s job is to work directly with detectives and victims that are going through the criminal-justice system. She provides prevention support to victims and works with various jurisdictions’ crisis-intervention systems.

She hears questions all the time from people on the outside.

Why isn’t she leaving this guy? Why isn’t she taking advantage of this resource?

Mayberry believes another question should be asked: “Why,” she says, “are we allowing men to batter women?”

***

Joan Schultz has worked as the executive director at The Willow Domestic Violence Center in Lawrence for three years.

If she could play NFL commissioner for a day, she would more harshly punish Rice and any other domestic-violence offender in the league.

“I would have given a significant punishment, financially significant punishment, to send a message to not only players but also fans that, ‘This is not OK and we’re not going to stand for it anymore,’ ” Schultz says. “That there are honorable men (in this league) that do not treat their wives, their girlfriends, their daughters, their mothers, their sisters in that manner.”

Like Mayberry, Schultz on a daily basis sees battered women and children walk through her doors with physical, mental and emotional injuries. She places herself in her patients’ shoes for a moment, thinking about their vulnerabilities and hesitancies.

Her voice rises an octave.

“The NFL takes quite seriously head injuries of their players,” she says. “But to be knocked out by your fiancé? Obviously some sort of injury has happened. How seriously are they going to take that? Seriously, two games?

“I don’t care whether he plays football or baseball or what game he’s playing, domestic violence shows no favoritism. It knows no boundaries of affluence or poverty. It knows no socioeconomic levels. It permeates through our society.”

***

Missouri senior Paige Walters, 21, volunteers with the state-funded Missouri Crisis Line in Columbia.

Calls flood in regarding mental-health issues; others deal with sexual violence.

“There are phone calls (from) girls not wanting to press charges but not knowing how to cope with what has happened,” Walters says. “We connect them with True North. (It’s) a women’s domestic and sexual violence organization.”

Walters has been attending Chiefs games as long as she can remember. Her father is a season-ticket holder, and the family has had the same three seats reserved in Arrowhead Stadium for 35 years.

When a star such as Rice receives a light punishment for domestic violence, Walters has to reconcile her love for the NFL with her experience as a hotline volunteer and emotions as a woman.

“I think the two-game suspension is deplorable,” she says. “The fact that other players with victimless crimes have been suspended longer makes me ashamed of the NFL.”

While Janay Rice’s situation is unfortunate, experts warn against placing too much focus on that one particular example, or any of the other high-profile cases in the world of sports.

They say that perspectives and attitudes toward domestic violence will only shift when the public looks at Rice like any other man, and Janay Rice like any other woman — a woman you love.

“Until good men start standing up and saying, ‘No more,’ ” says Schultz, the domestic violence resource director from Lawrence, “this will constantly be a problem.”

This story was originally published July 24, 2014 at 7:42 PM.