Greg Hardy domestic violence pictures bolster culture of consumption

On Friday, Deadspin’s Diana Moskovitz published photos and an account from the night police responded to 911 calls at then-Panthers, now-Cowboys defensive end, Greg Hardy’s apartment in May 2014. The 911 calls tell conflicting stories: Hardy says on his that a woman, Nicole Holder, is attacking him; another call was from a neighbor who reported, “he is beating her ass right the f— now.” In Deadspin’s new report, there are 47 photos, all but two are of Holder within a day of the incident; the other two are of Hardy’s face. She is covered with bruises and abrasions literally from her head to her feet.

The photos are accompanied by a damning piece of journalism by Moskovitz. She used a host of sources such as interview transcripts from that night, police reports, the 911 calls, text messages, and snapchat photos (much of it released by Deadspin if you want to read through it yourself) to paint a terrifying scene of violence after a night of heavy drinking and some drug use. Holder is reluctant to talk to police, sure that nothing will happen to Hardy and that her talking at all could mean more abuse in her future. Some of this is new, but a lot are details we knew before either from previously released documents or from trial testimony. Moskovitz flushes it all out, connecting dots and giving a better sense of how everyone acted in the hours after the 911 calls.

With such excellent reporting and with how much we know about this case and the violence Hardy did to Holder, why did we need to see those photos? Most importantly, should part of the price a person pays for getting beaten up by a famous man be the consumption of their bruised and abused body by the public?

Hardy was brought up on misdemeanor charges, convicted at a bench trial by a judge in July 2014, and sentenced to 18 months’ probation with a suspended 60-day jail sentence. At the time of his conviction, the judge said, “the court is entirely convinced Hardy is guilty of assault on a female and communicating threats.” He immediately appealed to a jury trial and the appeal put his probation on hold. The case never made it to a jury, though. It fell apart when Holder refused to testify again, a common part of domestic violence cases and one of the reasons they are so hard to try. The Panthers never punished Hardy and the NFL only did so after the video of Ray Rice punching his then-fiancee in the face was released and scrutiny on the league and the behavior of its players became a national conversation. Hardy was forced to sit out with pay last season and his 10-game suspension by the NFL going into 2015 season was reduced to 4 by an arbitrator (the NFL did see these photos before handing down the 10-game suspension). Hardy was signed by the Cowboys in March, returned to action with some head-scratching, he-doesn’t-get-it remarks, and was on the field Sunday for Dallas’ OT loss to Philadelphia. Last week his conviction was expunged.

What Holder told the court and the audio of the 911 calls has been available for a long time. We already knew her story before the photos were released, people just didn’t really want to listen. Certainly there has been an angry response to Hardy’s signing with the Cowboys and his return to the game. Yet, these pictures are proof of the violence in a way that Holder’s own words, the testimony of witnesses, and the conviction by a judge are not. As we saw with Ray Rice’s elevator video, the release of these images has kicked up an entirely new and incredibly powerful wave of anger and calls for the Cowboys to drop Hardy. It was in response to these photos that Hardy himself finally publicly acknowledged that he did anything wrong, tweeting, “I express my regret 4 what happened in past.” The Cowboys felt the need to announce that they hadn’t seen the photos before signing him, implying that if they had seen them then they would not have put him on their roster (though that’s not what they meant; they just want to have their ‘we are doing the right thing’ cake and eat it, too).

It doesn’t matter if the Cowboys saw them, though. The photos do not reveal anything new, unless you do not want to truly think about what Holder’s body would look like after Hardy had “thrown her against a tile bathtub wall, tossed her on a futon covered in assault rifles, and choked her until she told him to ‘kill me so I don’t have to’.” They signed him regardless. If the issue is that they did so, nothing changed on Friday.

The argument is that the photos’ release is for the greater good, for a greater awareness of the problem, and a correction to the version of the story Hardy is telling. My fear, though, is that when people see Holder’s bruised body they thought not of Holder, but first (and maybe only) of Hardy, of what this meant for him, the NFL, or the Cowboys. I worry that we do not see the victim as a whole person, but rather pieces of a bruised body that when put together tell the story of a violent man.

The discussion about the ethics of consuming images of victims’ bodies is not an easy one but it is one we have to consider. It’s also not new. After the second, more violent video of Ray Rice was released, Hannah Giorgis wrote at the Guardian, “That we feel entitled (and excited) to access gut-wrenching images of a woman being abused – to be entranced by the looks of domestic violence – speaks volumes not only about the man who battered her, but also about we who gaze in parasitic rapture. We click and consume, comment and carry on.” Giorgis’ point works here, too. It is not about the victim and their humanity, but rather our own inability or refusal to see that humanity before the violence happens and, even after the violence, we withhold it until the accompanying images of it make into the public realm. If the goal is to truly challenge or change this culture, that is an unreasonable burden of proof. What of the beatings that have no photos?

If these images work so well, we shouldn’t need the photos of Holder after we already saw the photos of Adrian Peterson’s son after Peterson hit him with a switch, which we shouldn’t have needed after we saw the video of Ray Rice hitting Janay, and on and on. And you shouldn’t need those photos of Holder if you read the documents Deadspin has provided and the account that Moskovitz writes. If you care, that should be enough. Of all people, it was Ray Rice who said as much this weekend on ESPN’s SportsCenter, “These types of photos and videos are very tough reminders to domestic violence survivors. It really shouldn’t take photos, you know, or anything to understand the severity of domestic violence that happens every eight seconds as we speak. It does continue to raise awareness. It’s just a tough deal that it takes the visual, the photos, for the severity of it to be known. My deepest condolences go out to the survivors of domestic violence.”

And, if you care, on Thursday night, only hours before Deadspin ran their story on Greg Hardy, Johnny Manziel started at quarterback for the Cleveland Browns, less than a month after a troubling scene where Manziel’s girlfriend said he hit her and witnesses corroborated it, but police didn’t press charges. There’s video, but only of her talking to the police. There’s no violence or battered body to consume, merely a woman telling her story. Do you care enough to hear her?