Letter to the Editor: About domestic violence

A Letter to the Editor by Helping Services for Northeast Iowa Executive Director David Runyon:

"Football is a tough contact sport.  We expect the players to inflict a lot of hurt on the guy across the line.  We also expect them to leave it on the field.  When a player is in the community, with their family and friends, or on a date, we expect them to be gentle giants.

Many of these weekend warriors are just that.  Some are not and recent media coverage of Ray Rice and his violence toward his wife Janay causes many to wonder how this could happen.  But it does happen often, quietly and locally. You probably know people who experience it behind the closed doors of their home—out of sight and not heard.

Last year our Domestic Abuse Resource Center served 367 of your neighbors whose experience was not flashed across your TV screen, and which was not dissected by "talking heads" and instant experts.

Janay Rice's experience of violence by a loved one happened in public and was witnessed.  Most victims of domestic violence experience their abuse alone, isolated from friends, even unknown by extended family. Children often witness and suffer in silence.  For Janay Rice there was no outcry from bystanders for two years.

We are all bystanders when we say nothing.  We all force a victim to suffer alone. We all are conspirators in our silence."