The NFL needs to stop relying on video proof, and start listening to survivors

The NFL needs to stop relying on video proof, and start listening to survivors.

“I say this all the time,” Carolina Panthers wide receiver Torrey Smith tweeted last week. “Folks don’t care about domestic violence unless it’s on video.”

He was referring to surveillance video first published by TMZ last Friday that showed then-Chiefs running back Kareem Hunt kicking and shoving a woman; not technically domestic violence, but still an alarming example of violent behavior that inspired immediate consequences when it became public. Hunt was cut from the team and placed on the Commissioner’s Exempt List the same day, although the incident in the video was first reported shortly after it took place in February.

In an interview with ESPN, Hunt said that he himself hadn’t seen the video until it was posted by TMZ. “I realized what I did once I saw the video,” he said. “It was really tough to watch.”

For those who have followed the NFL’s notoriously inconsistent history of penalizing violence against women, it was deja vu all over again. The league’s current domestic violence policy was instituted in 2014, after TMZ obtained footage of Ray Rice punching Janay Rice in the face in a hotel elevator. Rice hasn’t played in an NFL game since.

But plenty of others have faced allegations and continued to play — Greg Hardy might be the most notorious, since he continued to start for the Cowboys even after graphic photos of his girlfriend’s injuries were published by Deadspin in 2015. The past few weeks have thrown the inconstancy of the NFL’s personal conduct policy in stark relief, since Hunt’s swift termination came just after linebacker Reuben Foster was cut by the Niners following his second domestic violence-related arrest in under a year — and immediately claimed off waivers by Washington.

The logical conclusion is almost exactly what Smith said: the league only sees violence against women as an urgent, irrevocable problem if there’s proof in the form of video footage. Footage that fans can’t deny or ignore or say is lying, that they can parse and draw their own allegedly impartial conclusions about. Tape that can be analyzed as coldly and calculatedly as the All-22 players watch at every practice.

But silent security footage can never tell the whole story (just ask Solange). The league’s knee-jerk reaction to public video evidence inherently casts allegations unsubstantiated by video as less serious, when most intimate partner violence happens in private places that make obtaining such footage potentially impossible. By reacting so quickly when faced with an obvious PR crisis and dragging their feet when the allegations are confined to police reports and witness statements, the NFL is showing their hand — that their institutional interest in protecting women stops far short of actually caring enough to factor in the fundamentally personal nature of so much of the violence against them.

That’s why the type of domestic violence-related video we get most rarely is so meaningful: victims speaking openly about being in an abusive relationship. Elissa Ennis, Reuben Foster’s ex-girlfriend and the alleged victim in both of his arrests this year, appeared on Good Morning America today to speak about their relationship. It’s the first time in recent memory that a victim of intimate partner violence at the hands of a professional athlete has so publicly provided her own account of the relationship on-camera.

The reasons why most victims avoid publicly addressing their abusers should be obvious to anyone who followed the testimony of Christine Blasey Ford during Brett Kavanaugh’s Supreme Court confirmation hearings, who has yet to return to her home because she’s received so many death threats. Ennis herself already felt the wrath of Niners fans when she recanted her allegations against Foster in May, which she addressed in the GMA interview.

“I loved him, and love will have you doing things that aren’t in your best interests,” she said of her decision to drop the allegations and say that she had made them up. “I did what I had to do for the person I love. I thought that he would change.” It’s a rare public confirmation of what those who work to abate domestic violence already know: many victims protect their abusers in an effort to salvage the relationship.

Now those who would question Ennis’ motives have to confront that video, have to watch her cry as she recalls him telling her that she’s the only person he has. It’s a heartbreaking insight into the psychology of intimate partner violence, and one that is likely to cost Ennis much more than it will help her. But it’s invaluable to those of us who want to better understand this problem, and shows the armchair detectives that try to discredit her for what they are: careless, sexist, and uninformed. Ennis’ frankness not just about her specific allegations, but about her and Foster’s relationship as a whole, tells us something beyond the surface level of a video of a punch or a kick. It is one more voice in a ever-growing chorus of women who refuse to be intimidated into denying their own experience.

“I’ve been getting help,” Ennis said in the interview. “This is not love. Love won’t do you like that.”