Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: TUESDAY, June 28, 1994                   TAG: 9406300034
SECTION: EDITORIAL                    PAGE: A-4   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

THE MEDIA'S ISSUE DU JOUR

But his attorney, arguing against jail time, insisted his client was the victim. The lawyer accused prosecutors of taking advantage of new sensitivity to domestic violence in the wake of a certain crime story in Los Angeles that has drawn some public attention.

To which we say: Tough luck. As it happens, the motion to revoke probation for this media victim had been filed long before O.J. Simpson was charged with murdering his ex-wife and her friend. More to the point: If prosecutors are guilty of exploiting heightened awareness of spousal abuse, good for them.

A national mood, as distinct from evidence in court, ought not to convict anyone, of course. Nor should mob psychology or media drumbeats guide sentencing. A national attitude adjustment can, however, help the criminal justice system respond more seriously - as it has with rape and drunken driving, for example - when evidence warrants a more serious response.

Such may happen, helpfully, as bloody details of Simpson's case surface and are absorbed by an enthralled public.

We now know, for instance, that when police arrived at the Simpson home on one occasion in 1989, Nicole came running from behind a bush where she'd been cowering. "He's going to kill me," she screamed.

O.J. Simpson that night had beaten her to the point that she required hospitalization. He expressed not remorse, but disbelief that police would interfere in a "family matter." A police report quotes him as saying: "The police have been out here eight times before, and now you're going to arrest me for this?"

Nicole was quoted as saying: "You never do anything about him. You talk to him and then leave."

We have learned, too, that O.J. pleaded no contest to spousal battery after this incident. Because of the severity of the beating, prosecutors asked that he spend a month in jail and undergo an intensive year-long treatment program for men who batter their wives.

But the judge gave O.J. no jail time, and allowed him to pick his own psychiatrist and receive counseling over the phone. The former football star's brutality, we now know, continued.

Simpson has pleaded innocent to murder charges. But we have learned he was, at the least, a wife-abuser. Characteristically, he remains self-absorbed, uncontrite, unwilling to take responsibility for his actions. In a self-pitying letter he blamed "the media" for his woes, and denied there was anything wrong in his relationship with Nicole.

All of which amounts to a pretty good lesson in domestic violence and the failure to address it effectively. Had the courts some years ago impressed on O.J. the seriousness - and criminality - of his behavior, we can only speculate on what might have been. The public, in any case, is now better informed, and not only about what their sports hero was like at home.

Of course it shouldn't take a celebrity's arrest to focus attention on domestic violence, any more than learning about sexual harassment should have required a media spectacle surrounding a Supreme Court nomination.

But spousal abuse has roots deep in history and culture, going back to when wives were property. (The innocuous phrase, "rule of thumb," originated in an old English common law allowing men to beat their wives with rods no thicker than a thumb.) A serious response to the problem will require not just better law enforcement, but tougher attitudes.

Let's stop flagellating ourselves for our fascination with this story even as we add to the discussion of it. It is a fascinating story, and instructive. To find some good in it, let's start by commending the potential for heightened awareness among police and courts.

If spouse-abusers such as our hapless Roanoker are caught under new rules that no longer regard battering as primarily a "family matter," that isn't unfair. It would have been fairer, indeed, to Simpson, as well as to his wife, had more serious intervention been the rule of thumb a few years ago.