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Twenty-five years ago this month, Nicole Brown Simpson and her friend Ronald Goldman were killed in a knife attack outside her Brentwood home. From the start, the only suspect in the case was her ex-husband, O.J. Simpson. Although his criminal trial ended in a not guilty verdict on all counts, it did force the public to reconsider what it understood about domestic abuse. In a new special edition,True Crime Stories: The Trial of O.J. Simpson,PEOPLE looks at the impact the “trial of the century” still has today.
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Simpson pled “no contest” to charges of spousal abuse and underwent court-ordered counseling. But although the arrest was now public, Simpson continued to be regarded more as a celebrity athlete than as man with a history of beating his wife. When asking about the incident in a 1992 interview, ESPN host Roy Firestone framed the question as an opportunity for Simpson to clear up a story that may have been “distorted.” When that footage resurfaced inO.J.: Made in America,Firestone toldThe Washington Post, “the Simpson interview is one of the most tragic examples of how the media (including me) and the public trusted and accommodated their heroes, believing their mythology and perpetuating their deification.”
Months after Nicole’s murder, then-President Bill Clinton signed the Violence Against Women Act, which helped create that helpline and improved law-enforcement responses. In April this year, the House voted toreauthorize the VAWA, but the bill faces an unlikely future in the Senate, which is working on its own version. (Currently VAWA programs are still being funded.)
While strides have been made, recent statistics remain shocking: According to theNational Coalition Against Domestic Violence (NCADV), 1 in 4 women in America will be the victim of “intimate partner violence.” In 2017 the national hotline saw a 74 percent increase in reports in which firearms played a role in the abuse an 11 percent increase in which the situation reported involved children. Making Nicole’s case public “brought light to domestic violence,” notes head of NCADV Ruth M. Glenn. But even with that spotlight and the progress since 1994, she says we should ask, “Are we still not outraged enough to make a difference for those being harmed every day?”
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PEOPLE’s special issueTrue Crime Stories: The Trial of O.J. Simpsonis available nowon Amazonand wherever magazines are sold
source: people.com
