Los Angeles (AFP) – Former NFL kicker Josh Brown admitted publicly to domestic violence for the first time on Thursday in a televised interview, but insisted he never struck his ex-wife.
“What I did was wrong, period,” Brown said on ABC’s “Good Morning America”.
“Domestic violence is not just physical abuse. We’re talking intimidation and threats, the attempt to control, body language.”
But the 37-year-old, who was cut by the New York Giants in October after admitting the abuse to his team, said he never hit his former wife, Molly Brown, who says she was physically abused by him more than 20 times.
“I mean I had put my hands on her,” Brown said. “I kicked the chair. I held her down. The holding down was the worst moment in our marriage. I never hit her. I never slapped her. I never choked her. I never did those types of things.”
Brown was initially suspended for the first game of the 2016 season in relation to a May 2015 domestic violence case, in which he was never charged.
He played in five games for the Giants before he was placed on the NFL’s exempt list after police documents were released in October in which he admitted to domestic violence in various letters, emails and journal entries.
On Thursday he said he hoped to play in the NFL again.
“I want to be able to play again,” he said. “I want to be able to continue to write this story, continue to be a voice for change.”
NFL commissioner Roger Goodell was asked about Brown’s status at his pre-Super Bowl press conference in Houston on Wednesday.
Goodell said the league’s investigation into the player was still active.
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