As you probably heard, Janay Rice — Ray Rice’s wife and victim — took to Instagram yesterday to stand by her man. “No one knows the pain that the media & unwanted [opinions] from the public has caused my family,” she wrote.
Look, Janay’s been through enough already, but if you ever wondered why bystanders and police are loath to intervene in a domestic dispute, the fact that such intervention is often unwelcome by either party might help explain it.
Sadly, it is not uncommon for a victim to identify with an abuser. As Ruth Marcus writes at the Washington Post,
It is difficult for someone who has not been a victim of domestic violence to understand how she could stand by her abuser. It is difficult for someone who is an expert on domestic abuse to believe that this could be the only such episode.
“Even I, as a former victim, I’m tempted to say she’s pathetic she’s staying with him. But we’ve got to stop ourselves from doing that,” said Leslie Morgan Steiner, whose book “Crazy Love” recounts the ugly cycle of violence and apology in domestic abuse.
“She loves him just like I loved my ex-husband even at the bitter end,” Steiner told me. “I see somebody who is in denial about how much danger she’s in, which is the most common thing that victims feel.” [Washington Post]
Rice’s wife has the right to defend and stick with her now husband. We might disagree with that decision, but that’s her right.
But as a society, we have the right to be outraged, as well. And the NFL, a private company, has the right — if not the obligation — to punish him. Severely. And as hard as it is to say this, it doesn’t really matter what Janay thinks about that.