Year later, domestic abuse remains high on NFL brass’s radar
|
Version 0 of 1. On the fourth floor of a downtown Washington office building, two young women sat back to back, glued to their computer monitors as they watched stories and relationships unfold before them. They’re both advocates for the National Domestic Violence Hotline, tasked with chatting online with visitors to the organization’s Web site. Typically they hear only parts of the stories. The endings remain a mystery. On a recent afternoon, they heard from a woman whose partner was withholding car keys to prevent her from leaving. Another woman was in an abusive relationship but couldn’t find an available women’s shelter because her children were too old. One year ago Saturday, the NFL handed down its initial suspension of running back Ray Rice, and in the weeks and months that followed, the league became intimately and unwittingly intertwined with domestic violence — equal parts escalating epidemic, grave social issue and looming threat to the billion-dollar sports behemoth. In the days following the release of the Rice video, the hotline’s call volume increased by 84 percent, but nearly half those calls went unanswered because of low staffing. In the first six months of this year, the hotline has answered 52,000 more contacts — calls, chats, texts — than in the first six months of 2014. That’s evidence both of how additional funding, some contributed by the league, has enabled the hotline to serve more victims and of just how pervasive the problem is. “I do think that we’re helping move the needle,” said Anna Isaacson, the NFL’s vice president for social responsibility, one of many organizational changes the league made in the wake of the Rice video. “I don’t think needles move super quickly, but I think in the last 11 months we have seen a shift.” But while the league can point to a long list of structural changes, policy measures, financial contributions and widespread efforts to address domestic violence both inside the sport and out, some women’s groups say the NFL continually has come up short. Terry O’Neill, president of the National Organization for Women, likened the NFL’s monetary contributions to a “Band-Aid on an open, gaping wound” and said by touting these checkbook measures, the NFL is “using money as a sort of fig leaf.” “They’re trying hard to spin the image of football,” she said. “It has not been substantive; it has been mostly PR as far as I can tell.” Perhaps the biggest, most visible impact in the past year can be seen at the National Domestic Violence Hotline, which is receiving $5 million annually for five years from the NFL. Already the organization has added 30 new staffers, identified larger office space for its headquarters in Austin and earlier this month opened its D.C. office, hoping to have a base to better lobby and engage lawmakers, in addition to the advocates stationed there to engage with online visitors. With increased staffing, advocates are able to answer more than 80 percent of the 1,150 contacts they receive each day. “That first call for help is critical,” said Katie Ray-Jones, the hotline’s CEO. “They may not reach out again. I think that’s where we all get a little teary. We know we have more work to do.” Advocates say it’s difficult to quantify just how much has changed in one year’s time. Arrest numbers or criminal charges might take years to reflect an impact, and even then there might be an uptick in reported instances of abuse before domestic violence begins to trend downward. Increased media mentions and mainstream dialogue, they say, de-stigmatizes abuse and encourages victims to come forward. The NFL helped produce and broadcast public-service announcements in conjunction with the “No More” awareness campaign that aired 12,770 times in the past year. “The NFL has a huge platform,” Isaacson said. “We have a large-scale visibility: We have millions of eyeballs on us, not only during season but throughout the year. Our role is to really take that and use it for good.” Still, critics say league officials care more about aesthetics than producing actual change. While the league has put more women in leadership positions and retained senior advisers who are experienced in the fields of domestic violence and sexual assault, Commissioner Roger Goodell largely has weathered the storm and withstood many calls for his ouster. “They still have a problem, and they don’t really have the leadership to fix it,” said Shaunna Thomas, co-founder of the group UltraViolet who has been outspoken in calling for Goodell’s job. Thomas agrees the Rice incident has prompted mainstream awareness and more nuanced discussion, “but what we haven’t seen yet is that heightened consciousness translate into policies or outcome that are protecting real people,” she said. “Without real action, heightened consciousness is useful and it’s important, but it doesn’t ultimately change lives.” The league has made a series of efforts to educate its workforce. All league and team employees underwent domestic violence instruction last fall, recently drafted players discussed it at the rookie symposium this spring and all players and football personnel will undergo further instruction during training camp, where they will be shown short videos and asked to participate in question-and-answer sessions. Three-fourths of the NFL clubs have organized “critical response teams” composed of specially trained employees who are charged with providing immediate and confidential assistance to anyone in the NFL family, including wives and spouses, who experienced abuse. The rest of the league is expected to follow suit shortly. The league also revised its personal conduct policy to come down harder on players committing domestic violence. Those players now face a six-game suspension for a first offense and expulsion from the league for a second. O’Neill said the constant debate about player punishment serves only as a distraction, and there hasn’t been enough discussion about the victims of abuse — both inside and outside the NFL — and the macho culture that she said fuels the league. “It’s as if the woman doesn’t exist,” O’Neill said. The NFL “knows the risks that are there, and the way they handle the risk is saying, ‘Okay, we can blame the player exclusively. We can disparage his character, isolate him, tar and feather him and only talk about how many games he gets,’ ” she said. “And that way they don’t actually have to deal with misogynistic culture, the environment of violence, and they can continue to collect their millions and millions of dollars.” NFL officials, not surprisingly, don’t agree with this characterization and point out that Goodell has been active in the league’s recent efforts. He traveled to Austin last September to visit the National Domestic Violence Hotline’s headquarters and ask how the league could help. He stayed for hours, Ray-Jones said, not leaving until after 10 p.m. And just last month, he similarly traveled to Pennsylvania to meet with officials from the National Sexual Violence Resource Center. The NFL has helped distribute funds to aid rape crisis services across the country, and Delilah Rumburg, the center’s CEO, said the league is active in discussing strategies, ways to spend money and connecting the center with other potential corporate partners. “They had some real thoughtful, candid and forward-looking questions,” she said. “I was actually impressed with the questions the commissioner and his staff asked us.” The National Sexual Violence Resource Center has been working on a long-term plan that could include a Washington office, similar to the National Domestic Violence Hotline’s. An announcement will be coming soon about a multiyear, multimillion dollar initiative, which Isaacson said underscores the league’s commitment to the issue. “We want to be a real part of the solution on these issues and that takes time,” she said. “We went around the country, and we spoke to 150 experts and organizations on domestic violence and sexual assault. We listened. We learned. This is not a one-year issue for us. This is an issue we’ll be involved with for a long time.” |