Janay Rice, the wife of NFL player Ray Rice, has opened up about the domestic violence incident that shocked the world several months ago, after footage emerged showing her husband beating her up in elevator of Atlantic City’s Revel Casino.
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Rice sat down alongside her mother, Candy Palmer, on the Today show to speak to Matt Lauer about the incident that left her unconscious, and the fallout after it went public.
Rice revealed that she has watched the first tape of herself and her former Baltimore Ravens player husband — the tape shows him dragging her out of the elevator when she was unconscious — but she has not seen the second video of the actual abuse, and she doesn’t ever intend to.
“I saw the first one,” she said of the tape of the exterior of the elevator. “We just knew about it… we knew that it was gonna happen. We didn’t know exactly when it was gonna happen, but there was no preparing us for that at all. When I saw that, it was horrible. You can’t make excuses for anything, but we were highly intoxicated and in the moment, you’re not thinking about, ‘Oh my god, I’m on camera in an elevator.'”
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Speaking of the second tape and not watching it, she says, “I refuse. I’m not going to let the public bring me back there.”
She also explained that there has never been any incident of violence with her husband before this incident.
“No, no, no,” Rice told Lauer. “He knows what he would have to deal with, you know, if this was something. You know, I’m not going to sit there in silence and let something happen to me — and God forbid, in front of my child, just like, let it happen? There’s no way.”
Rice went on to explain that she doesn’t agree with the “victim” label, but she does agree that the incident shone a much-needed spotlight on domestic abuse.
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“There’s a silver lining here. I feel like God chose me and Ray for a reason,” she tearfully claimed, “and it was definitely to bring awareness to what people are going through every day. Even though it’s not what I’m going through every day, it’s definitely brought this topic to the forefront. And we’re OK with that.”
Watch the interview below.
www.youtube.com/embed/t2dsYk2gZOU
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