Whether he punched his pregnant girlfriend or not, ex-Dolphin Walton needs help. Anyone? | Editorial
Mark Walton needs help. His former football team knows it. His former former football team knew it. The court system knows it and, most important, Walton himself knows it.
We commend the Miami Dolphins for cutting Walton loose this week after his girlfriend accused him of badly beating her. She says that she’s pregnant with his child. Finally, an NFL team resolutely recognized that it had a domestic-violence time bomb and acted sooner rather than later. And though we hope team honchos would have had the decency to take the same measure had #MeToo not been in the air, we suspect that this more-recent iteration of women’s-rights activism played a role.
It wasn’t that long ago the star athletes of the NFL could hit a woman one day before being allowed to hit the field, seemingly, on the next. In 2014, the NFL admitted mishandling the case of Ray Rice, then a Baltimore Ravens running back. He was suspended for two games after security video showed him dragging his unconscious fiancee out of a hotel elevator. It took a second video of the blows he landed to her head for the league to suspend him indefinitely. The NFL, after an investigation conducted by Robert Mueller — yes, that Robert Mueller — toughened its stance against domestic violence among its ranks.
Five years later, Walton is out of a job and should be appropriately punished if found guilty of this latest accusation of indecency. He already had been dealt a four-game suspension after three arrests this year for reckless driving, marijuana possession and carrying a concealed weapon before being let go by the Cincinnati Bengals.
All of which means that, at 22, his talent as a running back means absolutely nothing if he is a failure as a human being. Let’s be clear. Walton is a professional athlete, an A-list name. These are the only reasons, sadly, that his bad behavior is in the spotlight. His case is click-bait, not an aberration.
In 2015, according to the Florida Coalition Against Domestic Violence, there were 107,666 acts of domestic violence reported to law-enforcement agencies in the state; certified domestic violence centers provided emergency shelter to 16,362 survivors and their children; advocates in those same domestic violence centers provided 113,907 safety plans and responded to 95,412 hotline calls — and the Florida Domestic Violence Hotline received an additional 27,587 calls.
Walton is “lucky.” He has adults in his life who should care enough to talk him into treatment or counseling. Not every troubled young man is as fortunate. Courts, too, must step up.
Look, redemption is hard. It’s not easy to take responsibility. It’s not easy to say his life has “turned around now,” as he told Herald sports columnist Barry Jackson in October, and really mean it. Walton needs help — as does his girlfriend. Being cut loose should not mean being forever lost.
Call the Florida Domestic Violence Hotline, 1-800-500-1119, if you or someone you know needs help.
This story was originally published November 22, 2019 at 5:00 AM.