Editorial: The NFL, Ray Rice and questions for us all
You don't have to be a high-minded moralist to recognize that what happened between Baltimore Ravens star Ray Rice and his then-fiancee in a New Jersey casino elevator was wrong.
But it does take more than a moment of casual outrage to determine what to do next.
The National Football League and the Ravens have, however belatedly, responded, and their actions or lack of them will remain grist for debate, dispute and discussion for weeks, if not the entire 2014 professional football season.
But if anything meaningful is to come of this sad experience, it must extend beyond the Rice situation, beyond the NFL or even beyond all professional sports. For, the saddest consideration of this story is not derived from, as Rice would describe it, 30 regrettable seconds in one person's life, but from the statistics those 30 seconds reflect in our national character.
Consider these chilling facts from the National Coalition Against Domestic Violence, the U.S. Justice Department and other experts:
• Domestic, or intimate-partner, violence is one of the most underreported crimes, and most victims never report it.
• Even so, one of every four women will experience domestic violence in her lifetime.
• Nearly a million and a half women are victims of physical assault annually, and domestic violence results in more than 18.5 million mental health care visits each year. The monetary costs run into the tens of billions of dollars.
As disturbingly familiar in the professional sports world as the Rice experience is, this is not the NFL's problem alone. Indeed, a broader question applies to the entire criminal justice system's ability to deal with such cases. Prosecutors everywhere are quick to point out that domestic violence cases are difficult to pursue because the victims so often recant or refuse to testify.
Such a decision by Janay Rice, who married the football star despite and shortly after the February casino altercation, apparently was involved in authorities' willingness to drop third-degree assault charges against Ray Rice and accept his agreement to court-supervised counseling.
And Janay Rice issued statements Tuesday, quoted by Reuters, that themselves are, at best, uncomfortably common to domestic violence situations. "Just know," she wrote on Instagram, "we will continue to grow & show the world what real love is!"
One wishes them the best, certainly, but it's not hard to see in their protestations and the NFL's almost befuddled response evidence of the secrecy and denial that too often attend situations of intimate-partner abuse at all levels in society. It is all well and good for us to be outraged at the Rice affair and the league's reaction, but we are equally in denial if we accept that they represent the whole story.
The conversation here shouldn't be limited to what should be done about the NFL and Ray Rice; it should focus on the more-difficult question of how we as a society combat a pernicious and pervasive disorder in our culture.