NFL helping Domestic Violence Hotline open office in D.C.
THE NATIONAL Domestic Violence Hotline, the Austin (Tex.) organization that provides 24-hour support and crisis intervention to abuse victims, is using the NFL’s money to open an office in Washington.
President Katie Ray-Jones said the new office will provide a base for the Hotline to influence lawmakers and advocate for policies that protect and support survivors of domestic abuse. The D.C. digs will also house new staff members who will help ease the workload of its Texas employees, who received 140,000 calls for help from domestic violence victims in 2014.
Last September, Commissioner Roger Goodell promised the league would donate $5 million a year for five years to the hotline amid angry calls for his resignation over the NFL’s tepid response to domestic violence, sexual assaults and child abuse.
Ray-Jones said the hotline, which was overwhelmed with calls last year after TMZ posted a video of former Baltimore Ravens star Ray Rice clobbering his nowwife in an Atlantic City casino elevator, continues to receive far more inquiries than it can handle. The hotline received 158,000 calls in the first six months of 2015.
“We have a goal — to answer every call and text that we receive,” Ray-Jones said. “Last year we were only able to answer 50% of the calls to the hotline. Now we are able to answer more than 75%. We are closing the gap.”
The Washington office will also be the home of a pilot program that will allow survivors to contact the hotline through a live chat service. Funding for the program will come from Mary Kay Cosmetics, the Justice Department’s Office of Victims of Crime and the Department of Health and Human Services, as well as the NFL.
The NFL continues to receive criticism for the way it disciplines players and em-
ployees who assault women and children — the controversy flared again last week after the an arbitrator reduced the domestic violence-related suspension of the Dallas Cowboys’ Greg Hardy from 10 games to four — but Clare Graff, the league’s director of social responsibility, said the NFL culture has changed.
Goodell last year hired Lisa Friel, the former chief of the Manhattan district attorney’s sex-crimes unit, and other experts to help the league develop anti-violence policies, and Graff said they have instituted changes that may not yet be visible to the public but will be far-reaching.
“Overall, there have been a lot of internal changes,” Graff said. “There has been a sea of change in the way NFL players, employees and team staff are expected to conduct themselves.”