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Janay Rice said that her now-husband Ray Rice had never hit her before the assault in the elevator that changed the couple’s life forever and pushed them into the forefront of a discussion about domestic violence and the NFL.
“Ray knows me. And there’s no way,” she told NBC’s Matt Lauer in an interview that aired on the TODAY Show Monday morning when asked if he had ever been violent toward her before. “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.”
Janay Rice’s mother, Candy Palmer, also echoed her denials of any previous violence. In the interview, which is being shown in two parts on Monday morning and Tuesday morning, Janay Rice said the Ravens suggested that she apologize at a press conference earlier this year when she apologized for what the team called her role in the incident. The apology immediately sparked criticism, something Janay Rice said was “frustrating.”
” … because obviously people took it as, you know, I’m taking light off of what Ray did. In no way. I was basically, not doing what I was told, but at the same time I didn’t think it was completely wrong for me to apologize, because at the end of the day I got arrested, too, so I did something wrong, too. Not taking any light off of what Ray did because I agree with everybody else. He was wrong.”
The interview is the second time that Janay Rice has spoken publicly since the incident in the Atlantic City casino. She said the hardest part had been staying silent until a decision was reached on her husband’s appeal, which was announced on Friday. Rice’s indefinite suspension was overturned and he is immediately eligible to play in the NFL, though currently he is not on a team.
“That’s been the hardest part, is having so much of your life made public and have it all be negative,” she told Lauer of staying silent. “That’s the hardest part. Is not having control over anything that has to do with you. It’s a natural thing for a human to want to come out and say, ‘No, no. That’s not me,’ or, ‘No, that’s not true.’ But it’s like a battle that we just can’t win.”
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