Over the course of the last nine months, there have been countless essays and think pieces written about Janay Rice. Janay—the wife of former Ravens star Ray Rice—was involved in a domestic violence incident with Rice inside of an elevator at the Revel Atlantic City hotel back in February. And ever since then, people have wondered what caused the incident to spiral out of control, what made Janay marry Ray about a month after it did, and how she was able to deal with TMZ Sports releasing a video of what took place in the elevator that night. But outside of saying a few words at a Ravens press conference back in May with Ray by her side, Janay has stayed silent…until now.
Recently, Janay sat down with ESPN's Jemele Hill to talk about, well, everything—from how she first met Ray to how her family handled the news about their now-infamous domestic violence incident to what she plans on telling the couple's daughter Rayven when she's old enough to understand what happened between her parents in Atlantic City. The result is an excellent first-person account, which Hill pieced together after speaking with Janay for three hours at Ray Rice's mother's home in New Rochelle, N.Y. earlier this month. You can read the entire account here. It's a great read, and Janay is very open and honest about a lot of things.
You can also check out five of the things that we learned from her story by scrolling down. This woman has clearly been through a lot.