Actor Victor Rivers Throws a Punch at Domestic Violence * BREAKING THE CYCLE
By Lisa Messinger
May 21, 2000

Scene 1: Victor Rivers walks into a police station and tells the cops he wants them to look at something and dramatically strips off his clothes revealing the bumps and burns his father inflicted all over his 12-year-old body.

Scene 2: Rivers' father takes a sniff of the then-14-year-old's wrestling uniform and realizes it doesn't smell of sweat and that his son must have just been dampening it each day with water to throw his father off the track. Father figures out that instead of going to wrestling practice every day, Rivers had been stealing visits with his battered mother in her nearby hiding place. Father beats Rivers to a pulp.

Scene 3: Father cowers at his son's feet after the first -- and last -- punch his then 15-year-old strapping son threw at him in self defense during a knife attack. Rivers flees his father's home for the streets.

Gritty scenes from a Victor Rivers film? They could have been. After all, the successful Hermosa Beach actor, now 44, appeared as a sinister gun-wielding killer in the Laurence Fishbourne film "Fled," Antonio Banderas' cunning bandit brother in "The Mask of Zorro" and a heavily tattooed bully prison inmate in his starring role in the raw "Blood In/Blood Out."

But these are scenes straight out of Rivers' life, a life of constant beatings from his father that has prompted him to become one of the only men who speaks out nationally on domestic violence, a subject traditionally linked with women victims.

Rivers is spokesman for the National Network to End Domestic Violence (NNEDV), a Washington, D.C.-based activism organization, from which he will receive a major award in June. After contacting the group last year, Rivers has spoken to domestic violence coalitions all over the country as well as lobbying government leaders with those who head NNEDV.

"I can't tell you how important a voice like Victor's is," said Lynn Rosenthal, NNEDV executive director. 'Boys who are battered or who see their mothers battered are at real risk of becoming batterers themselves.

"But, for them to see a role model like Victor who has been successful in both the sports world and the work world, and who has emerged with love -- rather than anger -- to share, is just priceless. He is also a living example of the great results the kind of community support we advocate can produce."

The incredible community support young Victor would later receive, though, was still a long way off when he walked into that police station in Hawthorne.

"I naively thought just by dramatically stripping and showing the burns and bruises my father had left all over me that the police would immediately come home with me and remove my father," said Rivers, who had emigrated from Cuba with his family a few years earlier.

"But there was a lot more to it than that. The police said they'd almost have to catch my father in the act. They said they would come and chat with my father with me there, but I knew that was almost like sentencing myself to death."

The beatings continued and soon Rivers' father secretly took his five kids to live in Miami, leaving their mother, who was barely able to speak English, panic-stricken and searching for them. When Rivers' father, a computer programmer, came at him with the huge machete-style knife and Rivers, by then a high school football, baseball and wrestling team star, punched him, he knew he would never again return to his home or to school.

"I began living on the streets but, fortunately, one of my teammates saw me," Rivers said. "He begged me to come and see his father who was a distinguished attorney." That led to a restraining order against Rivers' father and court-granted permission to live outside his father's home. What Rivers didn't expect was the outpouring of community support. "The booster clubs for all my teams decided that I was going to rotate between living with different families," he said.

After having good experiences at a few homes, when Rivers walked into the fourth one, he knew immediately he "was home." Steven Bauer (who eventually also became an actor and starred in "Scarface" with Al Pacino and "Thief of Hearts") was a fellow football player and acquaintance. His family was also from Cuba.

"Something just clicked the minute I moved into that house," said Rivers. "Those people didn't just give me a place to stay, they taught me what a loving family was."

Rivers, who still thinks of Bauer, his mother, father and brother as his second family, didn't leave until he got a full football scholarship to Florida State University and played for the champion Seminoles and famed coach Bobby Bowden, who also became a close mentor.

"Along the way, the former gang member was also named most popular boy and senior class president of his high school. "You have to realize none of these later victories was a sure thing by any measure of the imagination," said Lillian Bethea, Bauer's mother who was a longtime school teacher. "When Victor came to us, he was a big, scary, scowling, silent guy who had been in fights with other kids all his life. We let him have his own space, but then couldn't help rubbing off on him."

After a while, Bethea said she saw a few signs that Rivers' shell was cracking. "One of the only rules I had with my kids was that they call me when they were going to be out late and tell me where they were and when they would be home. I think I knew big changes were in the works when Victor and my sons would be out and Victor started to be the one who always called me.

"Then, after a long time living with us, he really touched my heart. We were at someone's house and I was introducing my boys, saying, "This is my son Rocky (Steven's name at the time) and this is my son Ernesto.' Well,Victor piped in from the couch and said, 'Hey, I'm your son, too.' He had already been calling me 'momcats', a nickname my sons gave me, for a while."

The softening Rivers felt while living with Bethea and her family also helped him forge good future relationships with his mother and siblings. He has close relationships with all of them. (His father committed suicide when Rivers was in his twenties, leaving notes that stated his regret for what he'd done.)

"That's another thing about Victor's story that is so touching," said Rosenthal. "Some people can't help but emerge from these situations with anger toward their mothers—which is really misplaced since the mother was a victim, too. But Victor never, ever felt anger toward his mother and that's part of why he has been able to go on and lead a life filled with healthy relationships."

Even after his outstanding experience in Bethea's home, though, Rivers was unsure whether he would be able to behave normally in relationships. He spent two years as a defensive lineman with the Miami Dolphins (the first Cuban-American ever to be drafted, which made him a revered local celebrity) and then took Bauer's encouragement to try acting before putting his degree in criminology to work.

The acting bug bit hard as he roomed with Bauer in Los Angeles and appeared in plays and then started getting film work, including critically acclaimed standout roles like that of Eddie Murphy's suave sidekick in "The Distinguished Gentleman." His questions about being able to participate in a loving, equal relationship dissipated once he met Miriam Eichler, a writer. The two have been married almost a decade and are parents to Eli, 5.

"As well as my life was going, though," Rivers said, "I still had this nagging fear about being a father. I thought, 'What if I am like my father? How do I know I won't harm my child?' This was no joke. I was rushed to the hospital with physical attacks that turned out to be panic attacks a few months before my wife was to give birth. "This may sound corny, but it was very real: The minute I held my infant son for the first time, all my fear faded away. I knew there was absolutely no way I could ever harm him. That's when I got my first inklings that I wanted to share my own story, to let other men and boys know that in their lives, there was not only the potential for hope, but for tremendous happiness."