Spouses want to add perspective to NFL’s policies

Wives send letter to NFL , league says it never came

As the Baltimore Ravens prepared for Sunday’s game against the Carolina Panthers, a former FBI director continued to investigate the NFL’s handling of the Ray Rice domestic violence case. A former federal prosecutor began a separate investigation on behalf of the NFL Players Association. The league has tapped three female “senior advisers” to consult on domestic violence issues. And Commissioner Roger Goodell met with 11 former players to discuss ways to improve the NFL’s personal conduct policy.

As the discussion surrounding domestic violence in the NFL gathers steam, one group is concerned it has yet to be included: NFL players’ wives and girlfriends, who are most impacted by domestic violence.

“Our concern is the wife. Is she okay? Is the family okay? What does she need?” said Latasha Wilson-Batch, whose husband, Charlie Batch, played quarterback in the NFL from 1998 to 2012. “When you have the boys’ club making all the decisions for the women, they’ll never understand what that woman is really going through.”

Wilson-Batch is a board member for the Off the Field Players Wives Association, a non-profit organization comprised of more than 230 wives of current and former players. The group sent a letter to the league office asking for a role in the ongoing dialogue, but the NFL said it hadn’t received the letter. The group sent a second letter Friday.

“We do plan to engage player wives and families and believe it is important to hear from them,” league spokesman Greg Aiello said.

No matter what changes are made, domestic violence experts fear the fallout of the Rice case could make future victims hesitant to report abuse. After TMZ unearthed video of Rice striking his then-fiancée, the running back was released by the Ravens and suspended from the NFL.

“It says to the wives and girlfriends of NFL players, ‘If you are concerned at all about your partner’s livelihood, if you’re concerned about your safety should you jeopardize his livelihood or if you have a desire to continue your relationship, don’t go to the NFL and don’t tell anyone,’ ” said Leigh Goodmark, a professor at the University of Maryland School of Law, where she leads a gender-violence clinic. “With a zero-tolerance policy, there’s no opportunity to get the assistance needed. It may endanger women as much as it helps them.”

Wilson-Batch has been around players and fellow wives for 16 years and has seen a variety of relationships and conflicts in that time. She’s not only concerned with the unwanted attention faced by Rice’s now-wife, Janay, but also with how other NFL spouses processed the developments. She serves on the board for the Women’s Center and Shelter of Greater Pittsburgh and says future victims will fear receiving the publicity and scrutiny levied on Janay Rice.

“Women are going to be scared to come out because they don’t want the public humiliation of saying my husband is an abuser or my significant other is an abuser,” Wilson-Batch said.

Some fear other unintended consequences. Ravens owner Steve Bisciotti spoke at a news conference last week and called this the worst crisis his organization has ever seen.

He also expressed concerns about the message that wives and girlfriends might take away from the incident and its messy fallout — though starkly different ones than the worries expressed by advocates.

“You can bet there are some opportunistic people out there that are going to look at this zero-tolerance place we’re getting to or going to get to, and they’re going to say, ‘Boy, this is really, really going to be easy to threaten and get some money … ’ ” Bisciotti said. “[W]hen other people are then motivated to do that, then you’re going to get to a point where some people are going to be very, very falsely accused.”

Terry O’Neill, the president of the National Organization for Women, heard the comments and called them “astonishing,” saying the Ravens continue to show a disregard for victims and little understanding of domestic violence issues.

“His public statement is that firing the abuser — punishing the abuser — will spur some kind of gold-digging behavior. It’s deeply offensive,” she said. “I don’t know what planet he came from or what century he came from, but for him to think that’s a perfectly normal thing to say is jawdropping.”

As the NFL tries to improve its policies, much of the discussion revolves around the idea of zero tolerance. After facing heavy criticism for initially suspending Rice for just two games, Goodell told owners last month that he would revise the personal-conduct policy and issue a six-game suspension for a first domestic violence offence and a lifetime ban for a second. Since then, 16 female U.S. senators sent a letter to Goodell urging the commissioner to enact a “real zerotolerance policy.”

But some advocates say that idea doesn’t take into account the complexities posed by domestic violence and the individualized complications that each incident and each relationship might pose. They say having baseline punishment standards is fine but that each case must be assessed individually and aiding the victim must be as important as punishing the abuser.