hawk45
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kidhawk":3ejk4w53 said:hawk45":3ejk4w53 said:You both are spot on that reactions differ.
I have a MUCH stronger reaction to this. I suspect many parents will as they picture their kid in the situation.
With that as a backdrop, I just go nuts, and I don't feel it's a gimme at all that Rice did worse. She was defenseless compared to him, yes. But she was an adult, with a helluva lot more in the way of defense and choice than a 4 year old kid who worships his absentee Dad. She continues to exercise that choice to be around him, and no way is that the first time he's raised hands to her. She isn't to blame, he is, but she at least has had opportunity to avoid harm and not exercised that option.
That kid was probably over the moon at just seeing his Dad. If there is a bigger disparity of power on the planet than that situation I don't know what it is.
See, I'm getting emotional here and proving your point. We're all in agreement f** both of these scumbags with a rusty chainsaw.
I can easily see how this can be considered worse. The only reason I'm saying that I think the Rice situation was worse is that there was malice involved in what he did. I don't know as of now, that there was any malice in the AP situation. It was definitely wrong and it was definitely abuse, but I don't think he picked up the switch thinking "I want to hurt this child" whereas Rice had to have intent to hurt when he closed his fist and swung.
both situations are bad and both deserve severe discipline from the league and the justice system, but I think intent has to be taken into account here. At least for me.
I would rather neither one of these situations ever happened.
You make a great point about intent, it's a big part of it. For me, I'm not ready to accept that Peterson was serenely doling out measured punishment here, though. That's his story, that he texted to the Mom after he realized oh crap I just whipped my kid bloody. I agree that Peterson didn't make a rational decision to hurt his kid, but I think it's quite likely he was pissed and hurt the kid in anger and for me that's not much better.