When I woke up on Monday morning, I watched new elevator footage of former Baltimore Ravens running back Ray Rice striking and knocking out his then fiancé Janay Palmer with his left hand, released by TMZ Sports.
This video of Rice and Palmer was recorded in February, following which both were arrested, charged and dismissed from jail for assault. Palmer’s charges were later dropped.
Outrage on social media and multiple national television outlets from the video of Rice hitting Palmer ensued Monday — when TMZ released an almost four-minute long video of the altercation.
The Ravens terminated Rice’s contract that afternoon and the NFL suspended him indefinitely.
February.
The first video of the result of this punch was released in February — seven months ago.
Let’s map out this case’s timeline and identify exactly where the failures took place.
There are failures to found on a variety of different levels within the different players that had a role in this case.
On May 1, Rice pleaded not guilty to aggravated assault and applied for a program for first-time offenders that could clear him of charges in as little as one year.
Rice was accepted into the program and avoided trial.
Failure No. 1 is found here. ESPN’s Jane McManus reported Monday morning that law enforcement had access to any and all video evidence — including the one released on Monday of Rice striking Palmer — and proceeded to allow Rice to avoid trial since he was a first-time offender.
Failure No. 2 occurred on May 23, when the Ravens held a press conference with Rice and Palmer — who at this point were married — in which Rice apologized for "the situation my wife and I were in".
The presser got even more repulsive as a shaking Palmer spoke into the microphone and apologized for "her role" in the incident.
I don’t care how hard a woman slaps you — it did appear Palmer slapped Rice in the video before his strike — you cannot, under any circumstances, hit back as a man.
The Ravens thought it would be a bright idea to live tweet this presser.
This tweet was posted from its official twitter account: "Janay Rice says she deeply regrets the role that she played in the night of the incident."
What message is Baltimore trying to send to women — women like myself — that if a man strikes me, I am partially to blame? That Palmer had to take some responsibility for getting knocked unconscious by her then-fiance?
Failure No. 3 came on July 24, as NFL commissioner Roger Goodell announced that Rice would be suspended for — wait for it — two regular season games.
Two games.
Rice would be allowed to participate in Baltimore’s training camp and preseason entirely.
Even through preseason, there was a story that ran on the Ravens’ official website that contained the lede: "If you had asked me on Feb. 1 to name five Ravens players I would never expect to receive a call at 3:00 in the morning about doing something illegal, Ray Rice would be on the list – EASILY." Disgusting. That story’s page has been deleted from the Ravens’ website, but it remained up before Rice’s contract was terminated.
The next failure came when the NFL, after public outrage over the measly two-game punishment, announced a new domestic violence policy, including harsher punishments.
Again: after the fact.
And if you thought that was bad, consider the fact that the NFL didn’t even have a domestic abuse policy in place beforehand.
So domestic violence up to this point has been basically swept under the rug by the league until now.
Finally, the last failure came when the Ravens waited again — seven whole months to terminate Rice’s contract.
To the investigators of Rice’s case, and to the Baltimore Ravens: You saw the video of him dragging an unresponsive Palmer by her arms out of the elevator.
What else were you expecting it to look like when she was knocked out? A softer, less violent action of some kind?
Rice receiving no jail time for these actions is sickening.
The fact that the Ravens failed to take matters into their own hands after no jail time was handed down is even worse.
Sunday evening, I received a UF Alert of a battery that occurred on campus, the fourth attack targeting women in just nine days.
The events have even made national news.
According to the Partnership Against Domestic Violence, a woman is battered every nine seconds.
How many national headlining stories directly dealing with this degrading, horrific and repulsive issue, like the one we’ve seen with Rice, is it going to take for that number to be drastically lowered? To become zero?
As a society, we have to do better.
It starts with giving no exception to violence against women, or violence of any kind for that matter.
In order for us to even begin doing that, we can’t wait until after the fact to get it right.
We must hold ourselves to a higher moral standard, and give punishment when it’s due.
This won’t eradicate the problem immediately, but perhaps it’ll spare a few women from violence in the process.
Follow Morgan Moriarty on Twitter at @morgan_moriarty
Baltimore Ravens running back Ray Rice pauses as he speaks during a news conference at the team's practice facility in Owings Mills, Md. A new video that appears to show Ray Rice striking then-fiance Janay Palmer in an elevator last February has been released on a website.
