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| KASSANDRA PERKINS |
I live in Kansas City, Missouri. I presume all of you know what happened here this weekend. A professional football player fired nine shots into a young women, Kassandra Perkins, his "girlfriend," killing her. In the house at the time, was the football player's mother. In the house was the three month old child of Kassandra Perkins and the professional football player. The professional football player, a murderer, then drove to Arrowhead Stadium where his team, the Chiefs, play. He met the team's GM in the parking lot, told him the police were on the way for him, and that he had killed someone. The GM, Scott Pioli, tried to talk him out of killing himself. The football player wanted to talk to his coach and an assistant coach. Pioli called them, told them what was happening, and they both came out to try and talk the man back from suicide. The football player went ahead and put a bullet in his brain in front of the men.
That's what happened.
Subtract the football element from the picture and you probably would have never heard of any of this. Women are victims of violence from their supposed boyfriends, husbands, fathers, and the like all the time. Women are killed by same all too often. The killing or the murder suicide, as in this case, usually makes the local news one night and that is the last anyone hears of it.
Something is wrong here.
The NFL, that gargantuan paragon of business, said "what the hey," the game must go on...and it did.
Why?
The NFL which decided the game should go on has been anything but untouched by domestic violence and violence against women. It isn't like they aren't aware of the "problem" in their business. That they chose to play a football game, 24 hours after one of their personnel killed a young women by firing multiple shots into her young body, and splattered his own blood in the parking lot of his place of work is an obscenity. However we shouldn't really be surprised by the NFL's decision to play on. After all, the fact is, that despite a long history of such violence within their business, the NFL has chosen to do basically NOTHING about it historically, has done nothing to prevent the carnage.
Dr. Jen Gunter, at her blog, reminds us:
Rae Carruth was a wide receiver for the Carolina Panthers when he arranged to have Cherica Adams, who was pregnant with his child, murdered. She initially survived the shooting, was delivered emergently, and her son is now 12-years-old and disabled with cerebral palsy. Ms. Adams later succumbed to the injuries she sustained.
Then there is Warren Moon, with numerous arrests for domestic violence.
And the Miami Dolphins’ Chad Johnson.
I could go on with a list of players arrested for domestic violence during their NFL career or after, but you get the point. I could also add college players, but this post has to have an end.
Earlier this year NFL commissioner Roger Goodell stated he was committed to addressing domestic violence, but changes have yet to be seen. The current system of fines and suspensions is as effective as closing the barn door after the horse has bolted and amounts to nothing worse than a slap on the wrist....
The NFL is the ideal group to get behind domestic violence awareness, but the statement released by NFL spokesman Greg Aiello about the murder of Kassandra Perkins tells me their heads are still firmly in the sand: “Our thoughts and prayers are with the Chiefs and the families and friends of those who lost their lives in this terrible tragedy.”
Lives weren’t lost, a woman was murdered and the murderer killed himself. There’s a difference. But acknowledging that would mean the NFL actually to take a real stand on domestic violence, and they probably won’t unless it affects advertising revenue.
The truth is the way that the NFL treats violence against women is pretty much a mirror the way our entire society treats it. It's a disgrace.
I don't want to hear another person tell us what a great guy this football player always was and how out of character all this was. Not only is whatever this man did with his life prior to Saturday morning of no importance to the woman he murdered, the child he left an orphan, and the others he traumatized, it is, also, of no importance to me.
I have read many good posts and blogs actually about this murder (and some very stupid ones as well). The one I have chosen to post here is from the Edmonton Journal.
No excuse for violence against women
Stop glorifying murderers; NFL linebakcer Belcher wasn’t a victim in murder-suicide case
BY JASON GREGOR, EDMONTON JOURNAL
I woke up Saturday morning fully prepared to write an article about the Edmonton Eskimos’ search for a new general manager. I’d conducted my interviews, gathered my quotes and was ready to piece it all together.
However, two spoonfuls into my cereal, I opened my Twitter account and learned about the devastating tragedy in Kansas City.
NFL linebacker Javon Belcher murdered Kasandra Perkins, his 22-year-old girlfriend and mother of his three-month-old child, and then drove to the Chiefs’ training facility. He spoke with his head coach and general manager in the parking lot, and then shot himself in front of them. He is now a murderer and a coward.
It was a tragic event, but I found the immediate public reaction concerning.
The initial response focused all on Belcher, and sadly, some suggested that maybe he wasn’t fully responsible. Concussions from playing football must be the reason he killed Perkins, or he must have mental health issues, many tweeted.
Why are we so quick to want to take the blame away from the person who committed the crime and find an excuse for him?
It is an insult to those living with mental health issues to paint him with the same brush.
He had no history of mental health issues. He made an incredibly bad choice, and unfortunately, his family has to deal with the consequences.
I’ve read numerous stories about him and most of them painted him as this great success story who’d overcome the odds to play in the NFL.
I honestly don’t care what he did prior to Saturday, because none of that matters. What matters is that he killed his on-again, off-again girlfriend in cold blood.
I don’t need to hear that he was an exceptional student at university, or that he always tried to impress his mother. If he did, he failed miserably because he committed the most egregious, gutless and spineless act possible. He took someone else’s life.
A Sunday morning NFL countdown show talked about Belcher like he was the victim. It disgusted me.
There were an estimated 600 murder-suicides in the United States last year. They were not all related to concussions or mental health issues, but the majority of them were orchestrated by the hands of men.
Belcher killed the mother of his child and then took the easy way out and took his own life.
He wasn’t a “good guy,” he’s a murderer.
I don’t care what Perkins said or did to Belcher in the weeks, days and minutes leading up the moment he decided to take her life. She didn’t deserve to die, Perkins’ mother didn’t deserve to watch her die, and her daughter doesn’t deserve to grow up without a mother.
Violence against any human being is unacceptable and, frankly, despicable, but as a man, I take more offence to violence against women.
Men are not better than women, far from it, but we are physically stronger, and too many men use that strength advantage and abuse women.
Shockingly, adding a baby to a relationship increases the odds of domestic abuse.
“Pregnancy and a new baby create a high risk of femicide,” said Jan Reimer, the executive director of Alberta’s Council of Women’s Shelters.
“In fact, violence or murder by your partner is the greatest risk to maternal health in the U.S.”
I know sports are supposed to be our escape from reality; however, sometimes we need to see that while this story involves an athlete, the story is about much more than sports.
The sporting community, many of them men, need to stand up and take notice.
Belcher’s actions were extreme, but let’s not fool ourselves into thinking this isn’t an epidemic problem in our society, and even in our sports community.
Violence against women has not decreased; instead it has flatlined, according to Statistics Canada. Family violence in Canada: A statistical profile in 2010 also reported that victims of spousal abuse were less likely to report the abuse to police than they were in 2004. Only 22 per cent of victims of spousal abuse reported the incident to police.
Alberta is consistently in the top three provinces in Canada involving cases of domestic abuse and murder suicides.
These numbers are very concerning, but it isn’t just physical abuse.
How many of you have sat in your men’s league dressing room and listened to a guy brag about how his ex “won’t be getting a cent of my money. I’ll make her life a living hell.” That is just one kind of violence and it is carried out by all types of men. Few, if any of them, suffered a concussion or have mental health issues.
How many of us have had the courage to say something? Why do so many of us just sit in silence? Domestic abuse happens daily in Edmonton; however, most of us don’t want to discuss it.
“In fact, every hour of every day, a woman in Alberta will undergo some form of interpersonal violence from an ex-partner or ex-spouse,” said Reimer.
We need to change this. Gentlemen, we need to have the courage to say something when we see or hear domestic abuse. You don’t want your daughter to be the next victim.
Football is a man’s game, and I hope the men involved do more than just have a moment of silence for victims of domestic abuse prior to an NFL game.
You can listen to Gregor weekdays from 2-6 p.m. on the TEAM 1260 and read him at oilersnation.com.
Twitter.com/jasongregor
© Copyright (c) The Edmonton Journal
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