The show Fox and Friends had an unusual takeaway from the video of former Baltimore Ravens running back Ray Rice punching his wife, Janay, in the face and knocking her unconscious in a casino elevator: "Take the stairs."
The show's hosts, Steve Doocy and Brian Kilmeade, also disparaged women like Rice and Rihanna for “sending a terrible message” by staying with their abusers. In a segment on Newsmax, retired-neurosurgeon-turned-conservative-commentator Ben Carson suggested, "Let's not all jump on the bandwagon of demonizing this guy. He obviously has some real problems." Obviously!
"And his wife obviously knows that," he added, "because she subsequently married him."
Soon after, women began flooding Twitter with the hashtag #WhyIStayed to show why leaving an abuser is harder than it might seem.
....Welfare is the major safety net for single moms, but its monthly benefit levels are far below living expenses for a family of three. In a study of Texas abuse victims, the number-one reason cited for returning home was financial, Buel writes.
In a cruel twist, the women who have the least access to resources are the most likely to be victimized: One study found that men who refused to give their partners money were almost 10 times more likely to be abusive than men who allowed their spouses to help manage household earnings.
For the rest of this article by Olga Khazan, go to: http://www.theatlantic.com/hea...-they-stayed/379843/
Another similarly good article is by Jessica Valenti in TheGuardian.com: Domestic violence survivors stay for a million reasons. Janay Rice's is her own.
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