Since the video of Ray Rice punching his then-fiancee in an elevator hit TMZ nearly two years ago, the NFL has gone to great lengths to at least outwardly change their approach to domestic violence offenders. The league has lengthened suspensions for offenders, had team owners say many of the right things about having zero tolerance for it and started a number of initiatives to raise awareness about it.
But what they haven’t done, it seems, is eliminate the standard of proof of “pictures or it didn’t happen.”
When the Ray Rice video hit the internet, there was immediate outrage because it became clear that the NFL’s first investigation, leading to a two-game suspension, had been so flawed: The police report was there, the incident had reportedly been accurately described to NFL officials and there were witnesses who saw the aftermath. In fact that aftermath had been caught on film — and released months earlier — and it showed Rice dragging an unconscious Janay Palmer from the elevator.
By May the two were married, and Janay was apologizing for her role in the incident at a team-sponsored press conference. Everyone was trying to move on as quickly as they could.
It wasn’t until the second video showing the violence that something was truly done about it.
We all acknowledge that this was a huge mistake right? Something we’ve all learned from?
Clearly not. A year after Rice’s perma-ban from the NFL, Greg Hardy didn’t become too toxic to be in a locker room until Deadspin released pictures of the bruises covering his former girlfriend after he assaulted her. It’s a problem that goes further than sports: Many questioned the validity of Amber Heard’s divorce filing until TMZ released videos of Johnny Depp hurling a wine glass at her. And now, Giants owner John Mara who even appeared in an anti-domestic violence ad after the Rice scandal, reiterated the point in defending the club’s decision to re-sign kicker Josh Brown despite allegations of domestic violence levied against him (though they were dismissed).
“One thing that you learn when you’re dealing with these issues is that there’s a big difference between allegations and convictions or indictments. And it’s very difficult sometimes to sort through all that and make informed decisions,” Mara said. “We attempted to make an informed decision. We’ll live with the result of that decision and we move forward.
“A lot of times there’s a tendency to try to make these cases black and white. They are very rarely black and white. You very rarely have a Ray Rice video. There are allegations made, you try to sort through the facts, you try to make an informed decision. That’s what we did.”
Whether Brown should be re-signed or not is not the question I’m raising. What I’m asking is, if a team owner who pledged a zero tolerance policy for domestic violence offenders is still citing a video as the standard of what can be used to be sure about whether or not domestic violence occurred, have we really made any progress in the past two years?
It’s unlikely, as long as team owners are still saying thing like that, that victims will have any reason to believe so.
