the trap is at one level basically saying, i don t you. you are stuck in dynamics of an abusive relationship. but that is condescending like who am i to say that to janay rice. she s an adult human being with agency over her human life. what do you interpret what she is saying? she s expert of her life. she s going to disclose what she wants to disclose. whether that s because that s the truth or for safety reasons, no one knows. that really is her story that she will only know the truth of ever. her and ray race. from an advocate perspentive, we d always talk with janay and see what she wants to do. that s a key policy conundrum, right? you have a system, a criminal justice system in which you can t prosecute if the witness who happened to does not cooperate. and then you get, it seems, at the other side these patterns of abuse that seem to go
responsibility for it and one thing about my punishment and everything going along with anything that happened is that i ve accepted it. i went fully forward wit. i never complained or i never did anything like that. i took full responsibility for everything that i did and only thing i can hope for and wish for is a second chance. janay rice and why she agrees with her husband next. here s some news you may find surprising.
more than one time. dewan smith-williams, thanks for your time. katie, i wanted to play that interview at length because it seemed to me janay rice had been reduced to this mute figure in her own drama. all we got to see was this tape played over and over. here she is telling her own story. it also is representative of survivors of domestic violence across the country, thousands of times a day who base ically say this was a mistake or this happened once or under alcohol and i want the person who did this to me to have a second chance. what is your reaction to hearing that? i definitely was not surprised by janay rice s comments and statements. it s what we hear from many women every day at the national domestic violence hot line. we often spend time as advocates working through what their experiences are, what their abuser did to them. educating about the pour and control dynamics that exist
unpunished. most of the time you don t have a video that shows you what happened. i ve talked to prosecutors. we heard janay say she did something wrong, too. i talked to a prosecutor who said that s improper. that needs to be reformed. that she was arrested? what s the best practice on that? we hear from women who say they were arrested sometimes even defending themselves. we know it s possible. we really encourage anyone who reaches out to us to have that conversation about, if violence breaks out, what s the safest thing to do. there are many instances where the victim in the relationship actually gets arrested because she threw something at him. she hit him. she spit at him, whatever that might be. there can be repercussions for that. we want to educate people about that. thank you both. really appreciate it. we llb right back.
the evidence i am not persuaded that rice lied to or misled the nfl. i find that the suspension was an abuse of discretion and must be vacated which means ray rice is now eligible to play football again if he can find a team to sign him. his wife, janay palmer rice and her mother candy palmer sat down with matt lauer for a lengthy interview and in that exclusive interview janay rice advocates on her husband s behalf as well talking about what happened that night in atlantic city. i guess it was about four days or so after the incident at the casino that the tape first tape came out. the one outside the elevator. had you seen the tape? i saw the first one. so did you see it before it was released to the public? no. we just knew about it. you knew about it. were you dreading the moment that that tape came out? yes. yes. we knew that it was going to happen. we didn t know exactly when it was going to happen.