14 DAY TRIAL // Former Baltimore Ravens running back Ray Rice has been let out of his $30 million (€23.2 million) contract with the Ravens and received a lifetime ban from the NFL after a video emerged online, showing him punch his then-fiancée / now-wife Janay Palmer so hard she was knocked out for minutes in a February altercation.
The case was closed in May, with the NFL instating a new policy on domestic violence that was not retroactive, so Rice got to walk away from the scandal almost unscathed. He did claim that the altercation had been “mutual combat,” but at the time, it was not certain how he had knocked her out.
With the video, which you can also find embedded below, now we know: he punched her in the side of the head with such force as to knock her head against the handrail in the elevator they were in, and she passed out cold. He then dragged her out of the elevator and just “deposited” her on the ground, looking completely unfazed by the whole thing.
It was the video that got Rice fired, not the actual events
Of course, most of this had been public knowledge since February, when word of the altercation got out online. At the time, both Rice and Palmer claimed responsibility for what happened, saying it was a private affair that got out of hand and that they were trying to solve through counseling.
She even apologized for her share of blame in the events of that night, and the Baltimore Ravens tweeted about it, as the second photo in the gallery will confirm.
When the video got out and showed the brutality with which Rice attacked his wife, even though she was the one to hit him first (this is presumably the share of the blame she was referring to earlier this year), the NFL and the Ravens decided it was too much negative attention to continue their association with Rice. Hence, he was fired.
It is the media’s fault, battered wife believes
This brings us to Janay’s statement in the aftermath of the video release. She still stands by her man and she still loves him: after all, she did marry the guy only a few weeks after he knocked her out in a fight. Moreover, in a statement posted to her Instagram, she blames everyone but Rice for what’s happened to him.
If his career is going down the drain, it’s not because he beat her up, but because we (the media and the readers) care about it. We shouldn’t care or meddle, Janay says, because that stuff is private.
“I woke up this morning feeling like I had a horrible nightmare, feeling like I'm mourning the death of my closest friend,” she says of the news that the NFL and the Ravens dropped her husband. “But to have to accept the fact that it's reality is a nightmare in itself.”
“No one knows the pain that the media & unwanted options from the public has caused my family. To make us relive a moment in our lives that we regret every day is a horrible thing. To take something away from the man I love that he has worked his [backside] of for all his life just to gain ratings is horrific. THIS IS OUR LIFE! What don't you all get. If your intentions were to hurt us, embarrass us, make us feel alone, take all happiness away, you've succeeded on so many levels. Just know we will continue to grow & show the world what real love is!” Janay continues.
Useless to say, lashing out at the world at large, even in the context of having already made up your mind to stay in an abusive relationship, is no way to guarantee your abusive partner is safe from criticism. Proof of that is in the fact that Janay’s statement made the backlash against Rice even more severe.
