Washington – The National Football League had already punished running back Ray Rice once earlier this year – a mere two-game suspension – after a video showed him dragging his unconscious girlfriend out of a lift.
But once the full video came to light showing Rice knocking her unconscious, the league cut him from the team.
The brutal punch is thrown in the close confines of a lift.
Unleashed by professional football player Ray Rice during an argument with his girlfriend, Janay Palmer, the blow knocks the woman to the ground, her head striking a rail before she goes down.
The incident, which occurred in February, was captured by a surveillance camera inside the lift at a casino in Atlantic City, New Jersey.
The latter part of the video showing Rice dragging Palmer out of the lift had been made public months ago. But the part of the video showing the punch only came to light on Monday and raised the seriousness of the incident to a new level.
The team severed Rice’s contract and suspended him indefinitely from the league. The sports apparel company Nike also severed its contract with him and a number of sports apparel retailers offered a programme that would allow fans to exchange jerseys with Rice’s name on them.
Reactions lit up social media websites, the White House issued a statement on domestic violence and questions were raised about when top league officials first saw the entire video and why their initial punishment – a two-game suspension levelled in July – was so lenient.
The conversation played out prominently on Twitter, where thousands of women shared their personal experiences of domestic violence through the trending hashtags #whyistayed and #whyileft.
Jillian York tweeted: “I honestly don’t know #WhyIStayed as long as I did. I was embarrassed and in denial.”
“I had no idea that emotional abuse was a real thing or that I was a victim,” tweeted Angela Mason at #whyistayed.
The hashtags stemmed out of a response to the criticism of Palmer, who married Rice after the assault. Palmer posted a statement on Instagram condemning the media for using her personal life to gain ratings. She referred to Rice as “the man I love”.
The couple, who have a daughter, said their relationship was not abusive and said the punch was an isolated incident.
NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell admitted that the NFL “didn’t get this right” by imposing only a two-game suspension after the first part of the video came to light. “What we saw on the first videotape was troubling in and of itself,” he said, adding that the full video was “graphic and it was sickening. That’s why we suspended him”.
Sapa-dpa