Former Giants kicker Josh Brown is using the attention of Super Bowl week to begin his image rehab and comeback attempts, going on television to debate the semantics of abusing his wife and to complain he’s lost “everything.”
“The world now thinks that I beat my wife. I never hit her, never once,” Brown told ABC in an interview to air Thursday morning on “Good Morning America,” his first sitdown in more than three months.
But the NFL exile answers another question by admitting he “physically abused” his ex-wife, Molly.
“I mean I had put my hands on her. I kicked the chair. I held her down. The holding down was the worst moment in our marriage,” Brown said.
“I never hit her. I never slapped her. I never choked her. I never did those types of things.”
In journal entries, counseling exercises and court documents that were uncovered in October, Brown admitted to a pattern of “physically, emotionally and verbally” abusing Molly Brown throughout their marriage. The King County (Wash.) Sheriff’s Office was aware of at least 20 distinct alleged incidents, including one on May 22, 2015, which resulted in Brown’s arrest and an initial one-game NFL suspension.
Brown purports to be “fully accountable,” yet he sounds betrayed when he told GMA about his diary pages being released by the cops.
“These were the things that you say to yourself and then you’d burn them. … And I didn’t,” Brown said. “The fact that my private things are being used against me, that’s hard to swallow. I’m talking about my journals. I had to learn all that and write that down in order to heal, and now you’re telling me that I’m going to be punished for trying to correct the things in my life that needed to be changed.”
Brown was cut by the Giants on Oct. 25, after several days of indecision by the franchise’s leaders. That day, the 37-year-old, 14-season NFL veteran tried to draw the same fine line: “It is important to share that I never struck my wife, and never would.”
“Domestic violence is not just physical abuse. We’re talking intimidation and threats, the attempt to control, body language,” he told ABC in this week’s segment. “An abuser is going to abuse to a certain degree to acquire some kind of a reaction.”
Brown, who is not attached to a team, also said he wants back in the NFL: “I want to be able to play again. I want to be able to continue to write this story, continue to be a voice for change.”
He remains under investigation by the league, commissioner Roger Goodell said Wednesday in Houston, site of Super Bowl LI.
“You know from last fall that we didn’t have all the information from law enforcement,” Goodell complained. “They released some of that at a later date. We now have that information, and we will continue that investigation…”
His job prospects, as a rusty, almost-40-year-old admitted wife abuser who likes to moan on TV about his lot in life, are dim.
Brown said, “We’ll see. If it doesn’t happen, I’m fine.”