The NFL Players Association is among those culpable for the NFL's ongoing domestic violence problem
"Is this all just window dressing, or are you really serious about making a change?"
LINDSAY GIBBS
DEC 6, 2018, 8:00 AM
Last Saturday, the San Francisco 49ers cut Reuben Foster after he was arrested for domestic violence for the second time in a calendar year. The Washington NFL team picked him up off of waivers just two days later. The following Friday, a video emerged of Kansas City Chiefs running back Kareem Hunt shoving and kicking a woman at a Cleveland hotel. The Chiefs released him the same day.
Four years after TMZ released a video of then-Baltimore Ravens running back Ray Rice punching his then-fiancee unconscious and dragging her limp body out of an elevator in an Atlantic City casino, the NFL’s mishandling of domestic violence has once again become front-page news.
“It did not surprise me at all, because neither the league nor the players association has taken meaningful action to eradicate domestic violence from the NFL,” Deborah Epstein, a professor of law and co-director of the Georgetown University Law Center’s Domestic Violence Clinic, told ThinkProgress in an interview this week.
While the league (Where are you hiding, Roger Goodell?) and team owners (What are you thinking, Dan Snyder?) have been the recipient of their fair share of much-deserved criticism for their actions — or, inactions, to be more precise — during this time, Epstein points out that there’s another group that deserves further scrutiny: The NFL Players Association (NFLPA).
https://thinkprogress.org/nflpa-domestic-violence-nfl/
-snip-
Epstein hopes that the NFLPA uses the increased attention on domestic violence as an impetus to pick up the dormant report and start implementing real change. It won’t be easy, instantaneous, or absolute, but its better than simply looking the other way.
“I think the events of the last week give them another chance,” she said. “There are so many moments where they could decide that this is going to be the time where we’re really going to make a difference.”
“Ray Rice was not a one-time thing, unfortunately. Take the opportunity now.”
= new reply since forum marked as read
