“Watson’s conduct was enabled by his team”: The latest report EXPOSES the Houston Texans as Deshaun Watson met 66 women for massages over 17-month span
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Deshaun Watson has been accused by over 24 different women of harassment or assault during his massage appointments, all these therapists were just doing their job while Watson decided to take advantage of his situation and have his way with them. The quarterback and his counsel Rusty Hardin have claimed innocence and that all of these encounters were ‘consensual’ in nature. Two grand juries in Texas appear to share the same view as they opted to not charge him with criminal liability. The NFL is currently deciding on what punishment to hand the quarterback, in all likelihood he will be suspended for the entire season but financially, he is in heaven as the Cleveland Browns have signed him for a five-year, $230 million contract with all the money fully guaranteed.
No wonder Watson and his counsel so desperately want everyone involved in this to move on, as per the newest NY Times report, that take a deep dive into records, deposition copies, and evidence for civil lawsuits as well as some of the testimonies of the women who accused Watson, showed that the quarterback engaged in similar behavior with more than just the 24 women accusing him of this. The Houston Texans, the team he was on at the time also enabled this behavior, directly or indirectly as they provided the venue for some of the massage appointments and the team even offered him a nondisclosure agreement after news broke out that a woman who is now one among the 24 plaintiffs had threatened to expose his behavior online.
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Deshaun Watson continues to vehemently deny all the allegations against him in the lawsuits:
Rusty Hardin has not been vocal about his client’s innocence lately, he only claims that Watson is innocent and that, “We can say when the real facts are known this issue will appear in a different light.” The Houston Texans refused to respond to these claims of supporting Watson’s behavior as well, they claimed that they learned of the allegations against the QB in March 2021 and have cooperated with all investigators and will continue to do so.
Watson has publicly claimed that he hired nearly 40 different therapists across his five seasons in Houston but the number is likely higher, the NYT has found the number to be 66 women in a timeframe of just 17 months from 2019 to 2021. A few of these women have supported Watson and claimed that he was only seeking professional massage therapy. One woman stated that during one of the massages, the QB was begging her to get sexual in nature and requested oral sex from her.
“I specifically had to say, ‘No, I can’t do that,’.” The woman spoke to sources on a condition of anonymity in order to protect her family’s privacy. The woman was just being friendly and was making conversation with the quarterback by asking him, “What it was like being famous?”
The main allegations against Deshaun have been that he turned massages sexual in nature without their consent, he attempted all sorts of tactics from purposely touching them with his private parts to coercing them into sexual acts. It is not evident when he started looking for these many women to give him massages. Hardin has claimed that his client needed to book appointments ‘ad hoc’ when the pandemic began though the QB had worked with many women before this as well.
Although not all the women who gave Watson massages between October 2019 and March 2021 have detailed their interactions with him, a significant number of them have detailed similar behavior. A deeper look into all the civil lawsuits including a preview of private messages that have been entered as evidence shows the lengths that Watson went to book massages and the ways that he earned the trust of these women.
The QB sent multiple messages to women who were massage therapists asking for an appointment, while some of them struggled to fit him in due to being booked or being unavailable, he went to lengths to ensure that he got an appointment with them. His justification for going through this ordeal was, ‘Just tryna support black businesses.’
On multiple occasions he presented himself as a person who really wanted to support up-and-coming businesswomen, there is one instance where the QB allegedly purchased 30 bottles of one of these therapists’ skin cleansers that cost $40 apiece.
Most of the women Watson saw for massages did not sue or call the police, some of them have said that he came just looking for sex. The woman who sold bottles of cleanser to him had multiple appointments with him, she was licensed to only give back facials but the QB got undressed and reportedly directed her towards his groin. There was no sexual contact during this massage but the therapist was of the opinion that he wanted more than just a therapeutic massage.
In June 2020, Watson became a regular at a span in a strip mall of Interstate 45 which was a 30-minute drive away from his home. He found a new U Spa on Instagram and had sent a message to the owner Dionne Louis who had contacts with multiple massage therapists and connected him with many of them for massages.
She looked out for him, sometimes arranging for a security guard, due to the expensive cars that he drove and as a result, she also got expensive things from him such as money. Louis received $5,000 from Watson to buy spa equipment and in one of her texts to her employees, she claims that ‘I told you I’ll show you how to get money from men that’s my specialty.’
Louis and Watson worked together for a long time and she set up multiple appointments with women at massage parlors, none of these women had licenses in Texas to offer massages. One of these women was the one who claimed Watson begged for oral sex.
He tried to build up to sexual acts, requesting her to work on his behind and go higher up on his inner thighs, which put her hands uncomfortably close to his testicles, and when he flipped over, he was exposed with an erection but she refused all his requests for oral sex. The woman did not sue Watson but four other employees of a New U Spa did. Louis reportedly gave the QB special attention.
Louis drove a woman to a hotel to meet Watson for a massage during which he groped her and touched her inappropriately. She was not in the room but Louis, in text messages later on appeared to refer to Watson treating her employees poorly by claiming that “I been talking to Deshaun, I just told his ass off he got it now, I told him he can’t treat us black women any kind of way.” Louis in depositions denied sending these messages.
The role of the Texans:
When Watson went to work he found an N.D.A in his locker room at the stadium, in the deposition, he said Brent Naccara, a former Secret Service agent and the Texans’ director of security put it there after he found out about Smith’s Instagram posts. He later began to take the N.D.A to all massages in that week.
He gave one to a woman in Manvel who signed it, another who said that her lawsuit that she ended the session after he suggested a sexual act. The QB told her she had to sign if she wanted to get paid and so she did. The QB in a deposition claimed that he used these N.D.A’s only for massage appointments because his other business obligations were taken care of by agents and lawyers.
The Texans maybe knew or did not know how many massages the QB was getting but their resources helped support and enable his behavior. The QB acknowledged in a deposition that the Texans arranged for him to have ‘a place’ at The Houstonian where he dined, used the fitness club, and set up massages in rooms.
Nearly seven women met him for appointments at the hotel two of them file civil lawsuits and two complained to the police. The Texans were not aware of the massage appointments as per Deshaun. He said that the access to the property was not under his own name.
Watson’s attorney is Rusty Hardin, an 80-year-old lawyer who has represented the likes of Roger Clemens, Joel Osteen, and Arthur Anderson, the accounting firm in the Enron case. He claims that all the women are lying and has had many opportunities to make his case to the DA’s office. The amount of connection that he has and the communications that have been made to the law enforcement and prosecutors directly show how much sway Hardin has and the contacts that he has.
The next step for Watson is discipline from the NFL, he has been traveling back and forth from Cleveland where he is training with his new team, and Houston where he met the NFL investigators and is giving depositions in lawsuits. The civil cases will be tried after the NFL season if not settled.
Watson sticks to his claim that he did nothing wrong. He was asked about a message that he sent to Ashley Solis, one of the prime accusers after their appointment in March 2020 where he apologizes, “Sorry about you being uncomfortable.” She was reportedly ‘teary-eyed’ at the end of their session but testified under oath that he still does not understand why.
Deshaun Watson to date does not understand the severity of the situation and how he has essentially changed the life of all these women for the worse.
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Sumedh Joshi
(2235 Articles Published)