What People Care About This Week: Ray & Janay Rice Abuse Scandal

This week everyone has been talking about Ray Rice's assault of his then fiancee, the new footage released, and Janay Rice's reaction to the public reaction of her reaction. I have found a timeline of the events that have led to a public case of abuse and an organizations pathetic attempt to cover it all up. This is a batch of nonsense that will get a lot worse before this is all said and done.

In the last few days since the video has been released there has been an 84% increase in calls to the National Domestic Abuse Hotline. Click here to contact them.

February 15. At the Revel Casino Hotel in Atlantic City Ray and Janay got into a fight. Both were charged with simple assault-domestic violence and were summoned to appear in court.

February 17. Ray Rice's Baltimore Raven's team manager Ozzie Newsome released a statement saying that they would wait for more information before taking any actions. Bad move.

February 19. TMZ released a video from outside the elevator showing Ray dragging his unconscious lady out of the elevator. Janay has the charges against her dropped. This is the part where all you haters stop talking shit about TMZ.

March 27. A grand jury indicts Ray on third-degree aggravated assault charges. The couple is said to be in counseling.

March 28. The very next day these two yahoos get married.

May 1. Ray pleads not guilty...naturally. He is offered a bargain to take anger management and counseling to lessen jail time since if he is convicted he will get three to five years. Janay doesn't want the trial to continue but prosecutors are like “That's nice but we don't need your help.” They also acknowledge that there is more video footage than what we've seen.

May 20. Ray get approved to enter a pretrial intervention program for first time offenders. Pffft. First time my ass.

May 23. Ray and Janay apologize for beating each others asses...publicly. Janay says “I do deeply regret the role that I played in the incident that night.”

July 16. The commissioner of the NFL Roger Goodell has a meeting with Ray and Janay.

July 24. Ray is suspended by the NFL for domestic violence because hitting women is horrible, having it taped is bad, getting egg on the NFL's face is the worse.

July 31. Ray releases a statement saying “I let so many people down because of 30 seconds of my life that I know I can't take back.” Yeah. Yeah, ya did.

August 28. Commissioner Goodell gets a shit ton of heat for not being tough on Ray with having him suspended for just two games. Now first time domestic violence offenders will be suspended for six games. Heavens to Mergatroid!

September 8. TMZ releases new video from inside the elevator showing Ray punching Janay in the face causing her to slam her head against a rail inside the elevator and collapsing to the floor. Ray is then released by the Ravens and suspended by the NFL indefinitely. Ravens coach Jim Harbaugh said after seeing the tape “It's something we saw for the first time today, all of us. It changed things, of course.” The hell you say!

September 10. Police say that the NFL knew about the full video back in April which means that they knew all that had happened and likely hoped that it would just go away the way most of these cases do. The FBI was called in by the NFL to find out how this was handled and to ind some way for the NFL to handle future cases like this.

Now all that being said Janay has been on her Instagram and is upset at how the pubic is handling this situation. She is currently blaming the media, not her now husband who knocked her out cold. “I woke up this morning feeling like I had a horrible nightmare, feeling like I'm mourning the death of my closest friend. But to have to accept the fact that it's reality is a nightmare itself. No one knows the pain that the media & unwanted opinions from the public has caused my family.”

Victim Mentality. “Victim mentality is primarily learned, for example, from family members and situations during childhood. It contrasts with the psychologically better-researched traits of neuroticismand psychoticism, both of which have a stronger biological or genetic basis. Neuroticism may be defined as general emotional instability or a generally enhanced tendency to experience negative emotions. Psychoticism is characterized by hostility and aggression.”

As someone who has grown up around abuse, experienced it in many forms, and have watched it happen I know what it is like to feel like there is nothing you can do about it. The one thing I never did though was accept it as a normal way of life. “This is not normal” is what would play through my mind, not “This is what I deserve.” Of course Ray feels bad...because he was caught. If that footage had not come out and they weren't busted with her laid out on the ground and him kicking her legs out of the way of the elevator door and picking up her sandal he wouldn't regret shit. But what is she regretful about? That she pushed him to the point that he knocked her out?

Ray has said that this had never happened before and blamed the fact that they were drinking on what happened. If you watch the way he reacted after doing what he did there was no remorse. There was no moment of “Oh, my god! What have I done?!” He treated her like something he dropped and didn't want to pick up. You wouldn't treat any human that way unless they were your sworn enemy let alone the mother of your child. Yes, there is a child involved.

His daughter Rayven (yes, he named his baby after the team so thankfully he didn't play for Buffalo) is a part of all of this. How does it feel to know that there is video evidence of your father punching your mother and dragging her out of the elevator? That your mother is defending him for his actions? He first lied and told people who responded to her on the ground that she was drunk. This is after spitting on her twice. As she woke up she said “How could you do this to me? I'm the mother of your kid.” He then called someone on his phone and said “I'm getting arrested tonight.”

There are close to 2,500 players in the NFL. In the past two years there have been eleven domestic violence cases in the NFL that have been reported or warranted enough attention to be noticed. Most of the time they are just suspended or fined for a bit and then are back. In the NFL you get more time for marijuana possession than for murder, assault, gun charges, or DUI.

Domestic abuse isn't just an NFL issue. It's a social issue that is more about just stopping people from hitting one another, men and women, but from people accepting that being abused is a normal way of life. It isn't normal to live in fear of being attacked by people who claim to love you. I know that most feel that there is no way out due to financial reasons, emotional reasons, or various forms of attachment be it children or a place to live. People need to realize that they are worth more than that.

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