Battered Women Scorn O.J. Reaction Swift To His Request To Give Domestic Violence Talks

Shock, anger and disbelief.

That was the reaction Thursday to news that O.J. Simpson wanted to speak to domestic violence groups about his abuse of his former wife, Nicole Brown.

Most said they saw Simpson’s overture as part of a campaign to rehabilitate his image following his acquittal in his trial on charges of murdering Brown and a friend, Ronald Goldman.

“He’s got to be kidding,” said Patricia Guilford, executive director of the Chicago Coalition for Battered Women. “I can’t possibly see what he would have to say other than try and clean up his image. I think it just says that this man has absolutely no scruples.”

Judy Colson, who said she was abused by her husband for eight years before she left him, had a similar reaction.

“The nerve of him,” said Colson, a member of a battered women’s group in New York. “All he’s interested in is in trying to assuage his guilt, in trying to make himself look good. What has he done that could possibly help our cause? Nothing, absolutely nothing. He’s just an example of a batterer who got away with it.”

Some battered women and their advocates said they did not believe Simpson thinks he did anything wrong in his treatment of Brown, whose face once was beaten black and blue by Simpson and who feared his violent tendencies.

They recalled that after Brown’s murder last year, Simpson, reacting to accusations that he had abused his wife, said he had been the victim and called himself a “battered husband.”

“He’s treating the country the way he treats a woman he’s beaten up,” said Tammy Bruce, president of the Los Angeles chapter of the National Organization for Women. “He’s trying to get us back. He’s still moving through the pattern of hurting and thinking he can charm his way back.”

“Give me a break,” Ruth Levine, a coordinator of a domestic violence prevention project in Miami, said when told Simpson wants to speak to battered women’s groups. “O.J. Simpson doesn’t exactly strike me as the repentant batterer. This man just got off with murder for goodness’ sake. If I were sitting in a shelter and O.J. Simpson came to talk to me, I’d be scared to death.”

Nicole Simpson’s sister, Tanya Brown, said she had no problem with the concept.

“If that’s what he wants to do - then all the power to him,” she told NBC. “He should do it.”

But Marissa Ghez, associate director of the San Francisco-based Family Violence Prevention Fund, said: “If he wants to talk to anyone, it should be to abusive men. It appears to me that he’s still denying a lot of abuse that went on in that household.”