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Opening Arguments

Wake-up calls

Janay Rice, victim of husband Ray's knockout punch, is lashing out at the media for "making us relive a moment in our lives that we regret everyday" and for taking "something away from the man that I love." That prompts this question:

A worthy rebuttal from the one person qualified to make it — or an attempt to shift blame?

Jeez, neither, although the latter is closer to it. What it is is the type of denial often seen from battered spouses.

The first question most callers ask, says Katie Ray-Jones, president of the National Domestic Violence Hotline, isn’t “How do I leave him?”

The first question is typically, “How do I get him to stop hitting me?”

[. . .]

“They are supposedly in counseling together and he may be telling her that he will change and is changing,” she added. “This may be a wake-up call for him to get help and a wake-up call for her to get help.

Hope the counseling takes, although he seems to need it most, along with a helping of anger management. Somebody I was talking to about this yesterday surprised me by saying, well, what did she expect? Here's a guy with an obvious temper who has spent his whole life learning how to behave aggrerssively, and he's the guy you're gonna take a swat at (which the video shows just before he decks her)? How did you think he'd respond? Oh, I dunno. More civilized behavior? If she doesn't leave, and he doesn't learn a little impulse control, this isn't the last video we're likely to see.

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