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“Should Ray Rice be forgiven?” seems to be the question on everyone’s mind…

Earlier this week, Janay Palmer and her mother sat down with the Today Show’s Matt Lauer where they revealed their reactions to the gut-wrenching surveillance footage that shows Janay being knocked out by her then fiance Rice then dragged out of the elevator in a callous manner. While we’re still deeply disturbed by the incident, Janay insisted we consider forgiving Rice because he is human and everyone makes mistakes (if you buy into the idea that this is indeed the first time anything like this has ever happened between them).

Today, part two of the interview, also featuring Ray Rice and Janay’s step father was released and Rice tries his hardest to convince us that he isn’t the monster the media has portrayed him to be.

“For me, it’s definitely been a coming together for all of us. Me and my wife, and obviously, my mother and father to my left..my relationship with my father [Janay’s dad Joe Palmer] is something that I cherish. It’s something I didn’t have growing up and I’m just blessed to be in this family,” Rice said in the interview.

Since the awful event, Rice undergoes counseling. “Our counselor, what he did was rip apart and build me back together,” he revealed. “I couldn’t resist it. And that was the thing. I was able to let somebody in and tear me down. I wasn’t resistant, it was just so much you didn’t know about yourself. You grow up and you think you know it all. I had a ceiling over my head. I was a professional athlete. That ceiling sometimes — you put yourself in a position where you don’t really understand where you’re going. But somebody else tells you that that’s not reality.

Up until now, it seemed like Janay had done most of the defending. In her initial response to the horrific footage, she said, “To take something away from the man I love that he has worked his ass off for all his life just to gain ratings is a horrific. THIS IS OUR LIFE! What don’t you all get. If your intentions were to hurt us, embarrass us, make us feel alone, take all happiness away, you’ve succeeded on so many levels. Just know we will continue to grow & show the world what real love is! Ravensnation we love you!”

This time, Ray defended his wife’s name against those who openly called her a “gold-digger.” “I knew my wife before I had anything. We both know where we came from, and just to be honest with you, she’s very independent,” he said. My wife can survive in this world without me. She could survive in this world in society without me. “She could’ve done it on her own. The one thing I want people to understand is that she sacrificed her well-being for me. And now the role’s a little bit reversed. I would sacrifice my well-being for her because if I never play football again, I’ll be honest with you, I would adapt into life and I would sacrifice more so she can have a better future.”

Ray, who was recently reinstated into the NFL, hopes the league is able to look passed with events that shadow his career. “They would have to be willing to, you know, look deeper into who I am and realize that me and my wife had one bad night, and I took full responsibility for it,” he said. “And one thing about my punishment and everything going along with anything that happened is that I’ve accepted it. I went fully forward with it. I never complained, or I never did anything like that. I took full responsibility for everything that I did, and the only thing I can hope for and wish for is a second chance.”

While Ray Rice and Janay insist this was an isolated incident, Jan Langbein, CEO of Genisis Women Shelter & Support In Dallas said in an interview on CNN, “Most violent relationships are not isolated incidents that we find there is a cycle of behavior where there is tension that builds, assault that happens but a honeymoon period that follows– a period of promises and hope if there will be change. What that means however, is that is will cycle back through.”

She added, “Where there is no accountable, we see that where there has been abuse it will happen again. it will increase in frequency and also in severity.”

But, does she think it will happen again? “I want to hope that this won’t happen again in that family. I want to hope that this is not just a honeymoon period for them. We see, however, that many times the first reported incident of violence, the first public incident is not the first incident.”

Does Ray deserve a second chance?

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