“Earlier than they have been too harsh, and now in a manner, they weren’t harsh sufficient, however this was a significantly better course of and didn’t put the integrity of the commissioner and the league in query,” mentioned Bob Boland, who leads the sports activities regulation program at Seton Corridor College. “The truth that the result’s unsatisfying is unlucky.”
Whereas the brand new course of seems to have functioned as supposed, leaving Goodell out of the evaluate of info and the preliminary meting of a penalty, the league’s insurance policies nonetheless seem to be a piece in progress. LeRoy pointed to the opening line of Robinson’s conclusion: “The N.F.L. could also be a ‘forward-facing’ group, however it isn’t essentially a forward-looking one,” indicating that the N.F.L. is underneath plenty of scrutiny, however its strategy to self-discipline has been principally reactive.
After being criticized for its dealing with of the case involving former Baltimore Ravens working again Ray Rice, who in 2014 was initially suspended for 2 video games after he punched his fiancé in a lodge elevator, the N.F.L. rewrote its private conduct coverage to set a baseline of a six-game unpaid suspension for first offenders of particular violations: Legal assault or battery, all types of home violence and sexual assault involving bodily drive or dedicated towards somebody incapable of giving consent.
In Robinson’s report, she concluded that Watson’s conduct towards the therapeutic massage therapists was not violent underneath the N.F.L.’s definition of the time period. Because of this, she mentioned, she was restricted within the self-discipline she may hand out. Robinson wrote that whereas it might be “solely applicable” to extra severely self-discipline gamers for what the N.F.L. outlined as nonviolent sexual conduct, she didn’t consider it was truthful to take action given the league’s present requirements.
Juan Carlos Areán, a program director for the nonprofit group Futures With out Violence, mentioned that he didn’t consider a six-game suspension, with none requirement for counseling or intervention, was enough to both deter or appropriate the behaviors of which Watson is accused. As a result of violence towards girls can take many types, Areán mentioned that insurance policies needs to be written to provide latitude to the particular person issuing self-discipline primarily based on the specifics of every case.
“We all know that you simply don’t have to make use of bodily drive, and it’s arduous to show use of bodily drive, when a sexual assault occurs,” he mentioned. “We additionally know that different kinds of assaults, emotional abuse and people sorts of issues, can have a really opposed affect in victims. These are very advanced points, and you can’t simply clearly quantify, ‘nicely, that is a lot worse than this.’”
Supply: NY Times