I want to be angry about the Ray Rice situation playing out in the news right now, but honestly it’s hard to figure out who to be angry with. This is a situation where there is blame to go around on every corner of the incident. This is a situation where I can see lines of connection all over the place and there isn’t a single villain to put blame on. The whole system was rigged to protect him from himself.

The obvious villain is Ray Rice. He hit his fiancée hard enough to knock her out and possibly lied about what happened to friends and authorities. Now, take a step back from the obvious, just for a moment. I’m going to ask a seemingly silly question. Why would Ray Rice think it was wrong to hit a woman? Before I go on, I will clarify again that this is NOT my position, but where would he have learned this lesson? First, his fiancée refused to press charges against him. The district attorney first refused to prosecute then when the grand jury went with it, a plea deal was made so that if he didn’t do it for a year and anger training, it would be cleared from his record. His employer, the NFL, suspended him for two games. The woman he hit married him and defended him not only at the trumped up press conference soon after the incident but recently when she blamed the media for her husband losing his job. Up until yesterday Ray Rice could clearly say that hitting ‘that woman’ wasn’t a big deal because it wasn’t taken as a big deal by people around him, including the woman whom he hit.

A big, but not the only factor, in Ray Rice not learning a lesson about violence is the bubble around fame. If the law was a strict to celebrities as it is for regular folks, Chris Borwn, Lindsay Lohan, Paris Hilton, Kylie Jenner, Brandy, Justin Beiber and many others would have been in jail. Jameis Watson, the Heisman trophy winner accused of rape, probably wouldn’t have won and might be on trial now. There are hundreds if not thousands of athletes who are given a pass by police, sports agencies and fans when it comes to domestic violence and other crimes. Three high school athletes were accused of raping a female in Steubenville and it was a big national debate on domestic violence. One of the students, Ma’lik Richman, was allowed to return to the football team. More disturbing is the news got very little coverage. I did see a story from the local news in Steubenville where they showed protestors opposed to the decision the high school made in putting him back on the team. I was expecting a crowd of people in front of the courthouse for the protest. There were a total of FOUR people standing with signs. I don’t care how you spin it, four people protesting his reinstatement to the high school football team doesn’t seem like the public cares about the victim in this case or the light sentence Richman received.

Do you remember Jerramy Stevens? He was a former football player but let’s look at his record off the field. He had an assault conviction after his graduation from high school, he was accused of rape in college and had multiple DUI and traffic violations during and after his playing days. In 2012, in a parallel to Ray Rice, he was accused of assaulting and injuring his fiancée. In reading some articles about the incident, I learned the police never took photographs of the injuries to his fiancée. Judge Michael Lambo released Stevens said he didn’t find any evidence connecting Stevens with an assault, even though the police did find blood on his face and shirt. The next day he married his fiancée, Hope Solo. Yes this is the same Hope Solo who had her own arrest for domestic violence this year. She was accused of assaulting her sister and nephew.

Ma’lik Richman, Jerramy Stevens and Hope Solo are just a few of thousands of semi-pro and pro athletes getting breaks from the system. Those are just the incidents that rise to the point where authorities are involved. How many domestic violence cases go under the radar? Going back to another elevator incident this year, if there wasn’t a camera in the elevator and if the footage hasn’t been released to the public, would the public had known or cared about the Solange / Jay Z elevator altercation? Would we have cared about Chris Brown if the Rhianna assault photos hadn’t been released? How many years did the coaching staff look the other way while Jerry Sandusky raped young boys? Look at the initial reaction of students, staff and even some sports outlets when the news was made public. We treat sports as a religion and athletes like minor deities. Even in the wake of the Rice decision, the NFL, and the Ravens in particular, are offering fans the opportunity to exchange their Ray Rice jerseys for another player’s jersey. Hey, if your hero falls off a pedestal, ain’t no thing. Find yourself another hero to worship.

What sits with me like a sick joke is I think the public thinks Rice is really being punished for this but I don’t think so. His wife, despite the domestic abuse, will probably continue to stay with him and support him for a couple of years. I guarantee there are enough people out there who will support Rice enough where he can make a living. All he has to do is wait things out until the hot glare of the press dies down. Just like the numerous examples of sports figures getting away with crimes, there are many who have bounced back from accusations to flourishing second careers.