Chances are, there's a history

photo In this May 23, 2014, file photo, Baltimore Ravens running back Ray Rice pauses as he speaks during a news conference at the team's practice facility in Owings Mills, Md. A new video that appears to show Ray Rice striking then-fiance Janay Palmer in an elevator last February has been released on a website.

Chances are, Ray Rice is not through hitting the woman who is now his wife. Statistics say he is likely to continue to abuse her.

I know. I abused a woman, actually a series of women, for five years or more in the late 1980s and early 1990s. I did it in public, in front of high school students, before civic groups.

My abuse, while all for show, was very real. The emotion was there, the ugly words, the denials, the "honeymoon period" and then more abuse.

I played the role of an abusive husband in a 30-minute play called "Fairy Tale" offered by what was then Family & Children Services (now the Partnership for Families, Children and Adults).

What Rice, a former National Football League player with the Baltimore Ravens, did was not role-playing. In an elevator, now seen on video around the world, he slugged his then-girlfriend (and mother of his child), Janay Palmer. And then he dragged her, unconscious, off the elevator.

When the first video surfaced of the Baltimore running back pulling Palmer from the elevator, and following his then-fiancée's official complaint, the NFL suspended him for two games, less a slap on the wrist than what some league players have received for smoking marijuana. And, in time, the league put a new domestic violence rule into effect.

Rice pleaded guilty to third-degree aggravated assault, entered a pretrial diversion program and is undergoing counseling. With his wife at his side, he apologized for the "situation" they were in, and in a second apology two months later said he'd made a big mistake. He accepted the league's penalty, which would have ended after this week's game, and probably realized he'd dodged a huge bullet. That big salary and nice perks would keep coming.

Whew, he might have thought. It's a good thing they didn't see what I did in that elevator.

See, if Rice is typical, he's done it a bunch, in private, out of the public eye. He's told her not to tell anybody. He's hit her in places on her body where the bruises wouldn't show. He's gotten her nice gifts after he's abused her. He's been the world's sweetest man. And then he's done it again.

But on Monday a second video emerged, a video from inside the elevator, that showed the punch that rendered his partner unconscious. That was the last straw for the Ravens, who released him, and for the NFL, which suspended him indefinitely.

Like many women, Janay Rice believes she is the exception to the rule that her husband will abuse her again. She married him after the incident on the elevator and on Tuesday blamed the media for the "unwanted options" in their lives. She told members of the media that "if your intentions were to hurt us, embarrass us, make us feel alone, take all happiness away, you've succeeded on so many levels." Unfortunately, girlfriends, fiancées and wives often stay ... and endure more abuse.

I couldn't understand this when counselors explained this to us actors more than 25 years ago. Why wouldn't the woman just leave her abuser, especially if the violence happened more than once? Why couldn't she see through the gifts and the apologies?

Like Janay Rice, they fear their man's livelihood will be taken away, that their child won't be able to eat, that they'll wind up on the street, that people will think less of them, that they won't be loved by anyone. Or, perhaps, it's a situation in which they've grown up, so the pattern of abuse is normal.

One of our "Fairy Tale" actors had been there. She'd been abused, had come out the other side and wanted to help those who were still being abused. She didn't play the abused wife in our play but the wife's sister. And every time she recited her lines, they came with the emotion of having been to that deep, dark place.

As the abuser, I remember the director telling me to get meaner, Get Meaner, GET MEANER. He wanted audiences to understand what it might sound like, look like and feel like. So after a scene of hurling invective at my wife, of tripping over the kids' toys and blaming her, of shoving her to the ground, I sat down. My heart raced. My stomach hurt. I could imagine the emotional, adrenaline-driven real thing.

Domestic violence crosses races, cultures and socio-economic lines. Men beat women, and women sometimes beat men. But it's always serious, and it's always wrong. It shouldn't take a video to remind us of that.

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