Kirsten Gillibrand: ‘The Way the NFL Handled This Was Disgraceful’

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Sen. Gillibrand, the junior senator for New York, gave the following comment to TIME on the Ray Rice/NFL domestic violence situation:

“Clearly the way the NFL handled this was disgraceful. But there are other important issues here. One, the institution, the NFL, supports their star when this guy who should have been fired as soon as the initial video came out. There was no question left to be answered. The facts were there. You see this across society—in the military context, you see this in college campuses—this constant protection of the star, of the favorite son, of the perpetrator. And the disbelief of the women. And then the constant victim-blaming and undermining. And what it’s really about in my opinion is how we value women in society.”

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