Washington, D.C. – If one of Robert Mueller’s FBI agents had turned in a report as incomplete as the Ray Rice investigation, that agent would have been transferred to Peoria.
Mueller acknowledges that he was asked by Roger Goodell to look into only two questions: “whether anyone at the League had received or seen the in-elevator video prior to its public release on September 8; and what other evidence was obtained by, provided to, or available to the League in the course of its investigation.”
Those were always the wrong questions, designed to protect Goodell from accountability for his failure to lead, and deflect the possibility of real and lasting change at the NFL.
Roger Goodell continues to run away from the questions that need to be investigated: When the NFL learns of an intimate partner violence incident, what immediate steps does it take to ensure the physical safety of the victim? What does the league do to ensure survivors’ longer-term economic security? What concrete steps has the NFL taken to change its business model — the way it treats cheerleaders, the absence of women in positions of authority, the failure to deal transparently with traumatic brain injury, the too-cosy relationship between league security and law enforcement — in order to reduce both the incidence and harm done by intimate partner violence attacks?
This non-report report is yet another reason why NOW continues to demand for new, competent leadership at the NFL. The league needs a leader who will seriously commit to appointing an independent investigator with full authority to ask the questions that are actually meaningful.