Meredith Vieira Details Domestic Abuse Experience After Ray Rice Scandal

Talk show host and journalist Meredith Vieira has come forward to discuss her own experience with domestic abuse following the national scandal involving NFL player Ray Rice and his wife, Janay.

Vieira aired a segment on her talk show this morning detailing her struggle with an abusive relationship years ago and why she, for a brief time, decided to stay in the relationship. An international Twitter handle "WhyIStayed" has been created in response to the Rice scandal as an outlet for women around the world to discuss why they chose to stay in abusive relationships.

"I was in an abusive relationship many, many years ago as a young woman. I want to explain to you why I stayed. It started out, I loved this guy. It started out, we'd have a fight and he'd just sort of grab my arm. I didn't think a lot about it, and then it turned into pushing me into a wall and then it went beyond that, to (his) actually taking his hand and grabbing my face and saying, 'I could ruin your career if I wanted to and no one would watch you," Vieira says during the segment.

Vieira then went on to discuss why she chose to stay with the boyfriend, saying: "I've done a lot of thinking about why, and I think part of it was fear. I was scared of him. I was scared if I tried to leave something worse could happen to me. Part of it was guilt, because every time we would have a fight he would then start crying and say, 'I promise I won't do it again,' and I would feel like maybe I contributed somehow to this – and they are saying this about Ray Rice's wife, that it takes two to tango."

Vieira recalled one particularly horrifying incident when her boyfriend at the time threw her naked into the shower and then threw her out into the hallway. She says in the segment that she stayed in the relationship until she got a job in a different city and was able to move away from her abusive significant other.

A video emerged last week that showed Rice punching his wife, Janay Palmer, in a hotel elevator earlier in the year. Rice has been dropped from the Baltimore Ravens and suspended indefinitely by the NFL.