[Burnett:] Tonight, the Baltimore Ravens insist there was no cover up of the Ray Rice domestic assault case. The team's owner, Steve Bisciotti, insisting ESPN's damning report that the team knew about the videotape of Ray Rice knocking out his now-wife. By the way, in excruciating detail, walked through scene by scene everything that happened hours after the attack. Well, Bisciotti says it's all lies. There was, though, something else that caught my attention today from Bisciotti. He insists it's a bad idea to implement a zero tolerance policy when it comes to domestic violence in the NFL, and here's his reasoning.
[Steve Bisciotti, Baltimore Ravens Owner:] You can bet there are some opportunistic people out there that are going to look at this zero tolerance place we're getting to, we're going to get to, and they're going to say, boy, this is really, really going to be easy to threaten and get some money. Because the minute I threaten him in season, he gets cut.
[Burnett:] Is the Ravens owner forgetting the real situation here? Tonight, we're learning more about the victim in the attack, Janay, from those who know her best. Suzanne Malveaux is OUTFRONT.
[Suzanne Malveaux, Cnn National Correspondent:] Janay Rice is neither a punching bag nor a punch line.
[Unidentified Female:] I know Janay to be very kind. To be very smart, intelligent.
[Malveaux:] For professor Sandy Nichols and others who taught Janay at Towson University, she is not simply the woman in the elevator.
[Sandy Nichols, Professor At Towson Univ:] A very sweet and motivated student. And she just worked really hard to do her best.
[Unidentified Female:] We are thinking of her as a one dimensional character, that she is the wife of Ray Rice, that she is a victim of domestic violence. Those do not define who she is. She is a mother, a friend, a committed student.
[Malveaux:] That Janay, according to friends who know her, is anxious to get her life back.
[Anita Marks, Radio:] On Sundays, game day, getting ready, going to the stadium. Sitting with the rest of the wives, cheering on her husband. That life as they know it has been taken away.
[Malveaux:] Anita Marks got to know Janay and Ray Rice personally when she co-hosted a radio show with the former Ravens running back in Baltimore.
[Marks:] They were a young couple in love.
[Malveaux:] Before she was Janay Rice, she was Janay Ashley Palmer, a girl from the New York suburb of Mt. Vernon.
[Unidentified Female:] She was the president of the student council at her high school which was an exclusive, all girls Catholic high school.
[Malveaux:] Ray attended nearby New Rochelle and they kept in touch in college. Their first purported date was at a Cheesecake Factory. In 2008, Ray was drafted out of Rutgers by the Ravens.
[Marks:] She followed him to Baltimore. He put her through school.
[Malveaux:] According to Marks, the relationship turned unstable.
[Marks:] It got very toxic, it got very unhealthy.
[Malveaux:] Janay threw herself into her studies, earning a degree in communications and becoming a proud mom, often seen pushing her daughter in a stroller from class to class.
[Darcey Morris, Towson University Professor:] She really perhaps wanted to be seen on her own merits, and her own work without being associated all the time with a celebrity.
[Malveaux:] For graduation, Ray proposed with the ring and a new car. Since the elevator incident was exposed, the two have rarely be seen in public. Only recently venturing out to a football game at Ray's old high school. Sources close to the couple say they are leaning on each other.
[Marks:] That NFL family is no longer there for him. He has to turn to someone or something. And he's turned to Janay.
[Malveaux:] Friends say they are thriving from counseling but with all the attention, they're having difficulty trusting people.
[Burnett:] Suzanne, just hearing how the friends would describe her, the things they've said. I mean, what have you said about how she's feeling about this entire incident? About the fact that she keeps seeing the video playing on TV?
[Malveaux:] Yes, you know, there are a number of takeaways here, Erin, because in talking to friends and associates, they essentially, they're hunkered down now at home. They're watching movies. They have a small inner circle of supporters. You got a few ravens players who call Ray, and the Lady Ravens, the wives who called Janay. And while he's feeling he's been cooperative with the NFL and since demonized, Janay still feels badly like she in some part played a part in tearing Ray down. And one of the toughest things, Erin, that they're dealing with is losing their identity. They were so wrapped up in the Ravens franchise. They even named their daughter Rayven, after Ray and the football team. Well, they got to let that go. They're also very concerned about the day their daughter will see the elevator altercation. And one thing they are hopeful about is that they do believe that Ray is going to play again. A lot of people very protective circle right now. Not a lot of people talking publicly. They feel very protective of this couple and they really need to get in front of this. And they're just still through it in the beginning stages of all this.
[Burnett:] Wow. Suzanne, thank you very much. An incredible look at what's going on with that couple right now. Former NFL player Don McPherson is with me, along with CNN anchor Carol Costello. OK. Great to have you both with us. I did not know, Don, that they named their daughter after the Ravens. And that little detail for some reason seems to be rather poignant, in giving a sense at what they're going through right now. What do you make of it?
[Don Mcpherson, Former Nfl Player:] I think one of the problems for a lot of NFL players and while everyone should see Janay as their sister, as their daughter, as their mother, as their friend, and see the woman that she is, you must keep an eye on what this is all about. These two are going through something very publicly that is probably the most private crime in our society.
[Burnett:] Yes.
[Mcpherson:] Which is why we call it domestic violence, if it only happens in the home, in the privacy of the home. That is its origin. So, the light of day is being shown. It is also showing how much his life was their identity.
[Burnett:] Yes.
[Mcpherson:] And his life as an NFL player was their identity, which makes it a very cloudy situation for both of them and as we're seeing in the Ravens organization and the NFL as a whole, trying to pull that apart and saying this is a domestic violence crime that is taking place in the context of this NFL landscape, that we are having a very hard and difficult time talking very honestly about it, because of how deeply entrenched it is in our families, in our culture.
[Burnett:] I mean, Carol, you know, you've been very open about this, that a college boyfriend knocked you out one time. This is something you've talked about and been open about. A lot of people watching are probably in awe of that, because they haven't been able to do that. You heard Janay's friends talking about her and Ray. And what do you hear?
[Carol Costello, Cnn Anchor:] I hear a lot of women trying to be good friends to Janay, when what they really ought to be doing is saying, Janay, you're a victim of domestic violence. You have to quit defending Ray Rice. You have to quit talking about this. You have to quit appearing in public with him. What you have to do right now is work on your relationship. If the counseling is really working, then jump right into it. This is a time to work on your marriage and your relationship and get your problems solved. Not a time to get the job back for the husband who punched you in the elevator.
[Burnett:] Right, and the guilt she still feels, because you're saying when you went through it, some of your friends were defending the boyfriend.
[Costello:] Right, I completely understand it from her standpoint, because now, she's destroyed their entire family life. It's not just his life that's been affected. It is hers and the daughter's.
[Mcpherson:] She didn't destroy it.
[Costello:] But that's how she feels.
[Mcpherson:] I'm sorry. Yes. But that's where, even this whole conversation is even shifting to the NFL now. And somehow the Ravens organization has destroyed his career. And so, all of a sudden, Ray Rice and that's why you have to be very careful in this conversation not to make Ray Rice the victim the victim of Janay Rice doing something to him, the victim of the NFL doing something to him. Ray Rice is a perpetrator
[Burnett:] There are a lot of people who would like it to be that way and one seems to be the owner of the Ravens who is saying, that a zero tolerance policy would create an environment of false accusations and ruining careers. I mean, that is a stunningly
[Mcpherson:] It's a slippery slope towards accountability, isn't it?
[Burnett:] Insensitive. I'm appalled that even when someone would counsel him to go out that he would say it.
[Mcpherson:] That's the problem that clearly no one counseled him. He didn't think that losing his job, losing the ownership of the team was a threat to him. So, this is a man who's completely out of touch with how everyone else is looking at this. And the problem for the NFL right now is that they have to qualify the players in the league versus what the league is moving forward. It's going to be a very difficult time if they have a zero tolerance with the players in the league. The statement they need to be saying is a guy like Jameis Winston right now doesn't qualify for employment in the National Football League. That's where the zero tolerance is.
[Costello:] The thing struck me during that whole news conference by the Baltimore Ravens owner is actually two things. He said he loves Ray Rice. He still loves Ray Rice. He believes in redemption but he wasn't curious enough to actually want to watch the tape of what happened in that elevator, because he didn't want to watch it, he didn't care. Which I find interesting because if you love a person and you're a great friend, you want to know bad with the good so you can hem your friend, right?
[Burnett:] Right.
[Costello:] You don't want to close your eyes to their faults, because that's not really a true friend. The other thing he talked about was redemption. He said that he would be interested. He would open the door to Ray Rice possibly working with players in the future to teach them the good evils of domestic violence, right?
[Burnett:] Right.
[Costello:] But he would not let him play football again. I just find that strange.
[Mcpherson:] And it's strange because he doesn't have the answer to this larger problem. And the answer to the large problem is, how do we get control of the guys who are currently employed with us? In other words, I'll get you off my problem so I have to do these press conferences, but help me control the other guys that bring to the league.
[Burnett:] I also don't understand the comments he would make about the people who do this, someone would accuse him of violence to get money. I mean, what money?
[Mcpherson:] To extort players.
[Burnett:] OK, if they're going to lose their job and not get the money. So, I kind of lose the logic.
[Costello:] I took it to be it might because, you know, I'm biased on this subject but I took it to mean all of these women would come out of the woodwork and accuse these players of wrongdoing when they didn't get anything wrong.
[Burnett:] So, they would have to be paid off and be quiet.
[Costello:] I don't know.
[Mcpherson:] Here's the problem for this conversation right now and the press conference this afternoon. It's just giving them further and further entrenched into how bad the misogyny and sexism within the league is. They need to be talking about the solutions. They need to be talking about, not that this is a women's problem and we need to control the narrative. When do we ask, when does a woman say, why does a man stay in a relationship where him being abusive to his mate is OK? It's part of the make-up and the DNA of men? That's the question that needs to be addressed. That's the question the NFL can be very effective in that conversation.
[Burnett:] All right. Thanks to both of you. And OUTFRONT next, Sierra Leone discovered more than 90 bodies this weekend, all of them victims of Ebola. The spread is now getting close to exponential. We're going to go live to Liberia. Plus, iPhone mania just how new iPhones does Apple sold in three days? And, adios Anchorage. Jeanne Moos on the fine art of signing off.
[Unidentified Female:] As for this job, not that I have a choice but All right. We apologize for that. We'll be right back.