When a football player hits a woman, we notice

While O.J. Simpson was standing trial for the murder of Nicole Simpson and Ron Goldman 21 years ago, it was revealed that he had repeatedly beaten his wife. One incident that landed her in a hospital occurred on January 1, 1989. Confronting the LAPD officers who were responding to his wife's frantic 911 call, he berated them for attempting to arrest him:

"The police have been out here eight times before, and now you're going to arrest me for this?" Simpson is quoted in one report as yelling to two police officers who were responding to a 911 call. "This is a family matter. Why do you want to make a big deal out of it when we can handle it?"

In January 1989, domestic violence was still being treated as a family matter, of little concern to the police or to society at large. A major result of the murder trial that followed within five years was an increased public awareness of domestic violence as a serious crime. Shortly after the trial, the Violence Against Women Act was passed through Congress and signed into law by Bill Clinton.

Two years later, in 1996, Congress passed a law preventing domestic batterers from purchasing guns, and by 2008 domestic homicide rates had plummeted 53%, according to the Department of Justice.

In Nicole Brown Simpson's case, knowledge of the abuse she suffered made Americans aware of the fact that sometimes, some men who beat up women end up killing them. Domestic violence was no longer a family matter, but a crime. Please keep reading for a look at how the beating of Janay Palmer by former Baltimore Ravens player Ray Rice has impacted our view of domestic violence in the year since it occurred.