They didn’t know what to do.
So a licensed massage therapist who worked with Ashley Solis reached out to an industry veteran, asking for help. “I have a colleague that was solicited during a session by a professional athlete at her in-home studio,” she wrote over Facebook Messenger.
Something had happened during Solis’s appointment with Deshaun Watson, an unlikely client for her nascent massage therapy business on March 30, 2020. That message, not previously public, was sent the next day, according to the veteran therapist. That was before any lawsuits, high-profile lawyers or p.r. spin, proof that Solis was upset enough to seek help in the immediate aftermath of the appointment. It is one of many new pieces of information uncovered over the course of two months reporting on and around the lawsuits against Watson. Along with reviewing exchanges—like the one above—that were previously unreported or shared only in part, SI vetted information that has been dispensed both by the lawyers for Watson and for the 22 plaintiffs, which has sometimes been incomplete, out-of-context or otherwise imprecise.
SI also interviewed five women—not among either the 22 plaintiffs or the list of 18 therapists who supported Watson in testimonials provided to his defense attorney’s firm—who worked with or were contacted by Watson, including one who both worked on Watson and referred him to other licensed massage therapists, or LMTs.
One thing is clear: Warnings about Watson had been percolating in the Houston massage therapy community for some time. Some were mundane—he was a last-minute booker, do not expect a tip. Others were far more troubling. Two LMTs told SI they were warned last year by others in their profession about Watson’s inappropriate conduct, including his making sexually explicit motions on the table or insisting on using a small towel that would inadequately cover his genital area, rather than the standard massage draping. And that same industry veteran Solis’s colleague contacted says she talked to Watson about his conduct after an appointment she set up in 2019—the one detailed to SI in March by a woman we called Mary, who has not filed a lawsuit. After that appointment, the veteran therapist told Mary in a text message that “only 1 therapist hasn’t complained” about Watson.
SI also spoke to numerous other Houston-area LMTs, multiple NFL players about massage therapy to get a better understanding of an LMT’s role in professional football and a therapist who says she had problematic interactions with other professional athletes, shedding light on the hazards women can face in an occupation too often conflated with sex work. (Solis and the other 21 plaintiffs were not made available for interviews.)
One year after her session with Watson, Solis filed the first civil suit against him. There are now 22 active civil lawsuits, each filed by a woman who says Watson engaged in some form of sexual misconduct toward her during massage appointments, including exposing himself, touching her with his penis, or, in two cases, sexual assault by forcing oral sex.
Legal culpability will be determined in the courts; Texas has a high threshold for defining sexual assault, and Watson’s team of attorneys, led by Rusty Hardin, will have a chance to make a defense in the courtroom beyond what they have said in the public arena. In a statement in April, Hardin said, based on his firm’s internal discussions with Watson, “the answer to the question of whether we are saying that all 22 plaintiffs are lying about the allegations of sexual misconduct by Mr. Watson is a resounding yes.”
This story, though, is more complicated than the binary matter of innocence or guilt. There is the enormous power imbalance in a star athlete’s every interaction intersecting with the vulnerability of a role performed in the hidden corners of the sports world; the often misunderstood nature of what constitutes consent and the difference between what is inappropriate and what crosses a line legally. All of which play a role in how 22 women and Deshaun Watson arrived at this point.
“You a massage therapist?” Watson wrote in an Instagram DM in the spring of 2020. He opened another exchange this past winter with “How can I book a session?” The therapists on the receiving end of these messages were enthused by the prospect of a prominent new client but also confused: They had never interacted with Watson before. Another LMT he first contacted over direct message says he told her he’d found her via Instagram Explore—an area of the app curated algorithmically for each user based on posts they have viewed or liked, or other accounts they follow.
Massage therapy is a key part of NFL players’ weekly recovery regimens. Many clubs have therapists come to the facility once per week, often on the Tuesday off day, setting up tables in a large room where players cycle through for treatment. The Texans have had a contract with Genuine Touch Massage Therapy since the team’s founding in 2002; the owner of the practice, Joni Honn, was listed in the Texans’ 2020 media guide as part of the sports medicine staff. She has a team of several therapists that players, including Watson, can also text directly for sessions away from the facility, though many have their own professionals they see apart from the team.
Watson, according to Hardin, gets at least two to three massages per week, including in the offseason, amounting to as many as 120 to 150 per year. There’s nothing unusual about that number in itself. But the quantity of different therapists Watson appears to have used, as well as the lack of experience of some that he hired and the massage techniques he requested according to the civil suits, stand out as different from the experiences shared by his NFL colleagues. One person with close ties to the Texans says a member of the team’s medical staff, worried about increased risk of injury to the franchise quarterback, was concerned last year when they were told Watson was seeking out therapists on Instagram.
An NFC defensive back says he gets one to two massages per week during the season, on Tuesdays and sometimes Fridays, and fewer in the offseason. Another defensive back, who plays in the AFC, says his in-season routine includes some type of bodywork four or five times per week, rotating among massages, cupping, dry-needling and stretching. The therapist will work on muscles the players overuse due to movements specific to their positions, including hamstrings, glutes and groin, as well as areas where there’s tightness or injury. Both players say this often requires painful deep-tissue work and myofascial release techniques. “A feel-good massage doesn’t really do anything for you,” says the NFC defensive back. (SI granted a request for anonymity from the players we spoke with, in exchange for their candor.)
Trust in the therapist’s abilities is a key criteria for both players. The NFC defensive back said in his six-year NFL career, which spans two cities, he has worked with a total of four massage therapists; he estimates that number is not more than six if he also includes his college career. When he changed teams, one of the team captains in his new city connected him with his massage therapist, and he’s worked with her exclusively—including through the 2020 season, when she got regular COVID-19 tests and limited her other appointments to safely work with her NFL clients. The AFC defensive back also has a set group of five bodywork professionals that he found via referrals from veteran teammates.
“Then getting comfortable with them over time, and developing that relationship, and sticking with my same people,” the AFC defensive back says. “You always want to use somebody that has experience working on guys in your profession. You don’t want a person that doesn’t really know what they're doing.”
Adds the NFC defensive back: “I don’t know guys who use 22 different masseuses,” referring to the number of plaintiffs during an interview in March. (“Massage therapist” is the proper term for the profession, considered by many to be adjacent to the medical field.) He was expressing skepticism about the plaintiffs—the number itself, that one player would have worked with that many therapists, seems so unrealistic. But the number is likely far higher. If you count all 22 plaintiffs as having worked with Watson as well as a former plaintiff who dropped her suit “for now” (she cited privacy and security concerns, after the court ruled all women had to refile with their real names), the 18 therapists who issued statements in support of Watson through Hardin’s firm and other therapists who spoke to SI (and whose accounts were verified), Watson has worked with at least 44 therapists over the past few years. He has reached out to more than that.
Hardin has not denied that Watson used many therapists. In an April press conference, he said, “In the year 2020, all of a sudden spas shut down. Nobody was getting massages unless they came up with an ad hoc way to do it.” He added that Watson, like many millennials, “does business transactions on Instagram.”
One of the LMTs SI spoke to was surprised when Watson DM’ed her in the spring of 2020, because she does not specialize in sports massage and works in a suburb about an hour outside of Houston. When she told him she was not able to work at the time because of the state’s COVID-19 restrictions, he asked, “Is it cause you’re scared you’ll loose[sic] your license.” She told him yes, and he replied, “You’ll be good with me. But okay.” (Both messages were sent around 11 p.m.) She never worked on him, but the date of an incident described in one of the lawsuits jumped out to her: It was the day after Watson had messaged her. (SI reviewed screenshots of this exchange, which appear to be sent from Watson’s verified Instagram account; Hardin, saying he would not address reporting from anonymous sources, did not provide a response to questions regarding this exchange or other anonymous accounts. SI has granted this LMT’s request for anonymity to protect her privacy and her business.)
“I was extremely relieved,” she says. “Because I will tell you, I really did almost message him and be like, , because [landing him as a client] could mean so much money for my business. But in my gut, it felt off.”
Seventeen of the 22 plaintiffs say in their lawsuits that Watson made first contact with them through social media, where they market their businesses. (The majority of plaintiffs also say they had never before worked on any Texans players.) The five other plaintiffs say either their boss set up their appointment with Watson or they were referred to him through a mutual friend.
The veteran therapist who Solis’s colleague reached out to for advice has referred Watson to multiple other therapists—including Mary, who previously shared her account of Watson’s misconduct with SI, and one of the other plaintiffs. This veteran therapist agreed to an interview with SI, but only under the condition of anonymity since her name has not yet been shared publicly; we granted her request because of the importance of hearing an account from—at this point—the only therapist to publicly acknowledge having referred Watson to others. However, parts of her story shifted over a series of interviews. SI will refer to her by the pseudonym Susan.
Susan has been a licensed massage therapist for more than a decade, with a clientele she says is about 90% athletes. She’s worked on Watson “many times over several years” and says she’s “only had professional experiences.” Susan has eight other therapists she sends clients to when her schedule is full, which she has done regularly with Watson. These therapists, including Mary, had contracts with Susan, who says she charges the client for the session, subtracts her referral fee and pays the other therapist about 70%.
Mary told SI that during her appointment with Watson in the fall of 2019, he purposely removed the towel covering him, told her she could touch and move his exposed penis (she ignored his suggestion), and began thrusting his pelvis into the air after developing an erection; she also noticed what she believed to be pre-ejaculate on Watson’s stomach. Susan confirms that Mary reported concerns about Watson’s conduct to her directly following their appointment, specifically the thrusting and that he wanted to be uncovered. She says she apologized to Mary and was “almost embarrassed” that happened with one of her clients. Susan says she then talked to Watson about his conduct with Mary, but declines to share details of that conversation, calling it “confidential.”
“I've had one person report something to me” about Watson, Susan told SI, confirming that this person was Mary. “And I had a conversation with [Watson]. I was confident that wasn't going to happen again after our conversation.”
But Mary says Susan told her something different after her appointment with Watson: that Mary was not the first therapist Susan had referred who reported back concerns about Watson’s conduct. In a November 2019 text message about Watson, Susan wrote to Mary, “whether the creepy stuff is his intention or not, he does it every time,” adding the parenthetical, “only 1 therapist hasn’t complained.” (SI reviewed this message, which was sent from a phone number confirmed to be Susan’s.)
Susan at first refuted Mary’s account of this conversation, but when asked specifically about this text message in a follow-up interview, did not dispute that she sent it. She contends that at the time Mary worked on him, she’d referred Watson to only one other therapist: Masako Jones, one of the 18 who shared a statement of support for Watson, in which Jones said the behavior described in the lawsuits “doesn’t sound like him at all.” Asked what she meant by Watson doing it “every time,” Susan said she was referring to his request to use a small towel or washcloth, but later said she meant a towel instead of a sheet draping. Susan maintains that she did not find Watson’s behavior “creepy” but used that characterization based on Mary’s account to her, and that she was going out of her way to be supportive of Mary.
Mary told SI she continued with her appointment with Watson after he removed his towel—something that had never happened with any of her more than 1,000 other clients—because she trusted Susan “that nothing weird was going to happen.” Her payment was also coming from Susan.
Watson reached out to Mary two more times from his verified Instagram account, each time not seeming to realize he’d worked with her before. Recognizing he could be an important client for growing her business, she was open to booking him again, but first tried to set clear boundaries. Mary told him that he made her uncomfortable during their appointment and that she requires full-sheet draping. He never booked.
“At the time, I took it more as he did this to me, rather than this possibly could have been avoided if I would have known,” Mary says. “It's pretty upsetting … that I was put in that situation. I have no idea what the intention was, in putting me in that position.”
Susan continued referring Watson to other therapists after Mary’s experience with him. She estimates she’s referred Watson to four other therapists since the start of 2020, as recently as last September—that referral was to her sister, who is also an LMT, which Susan says shows she did not view Watson as a threat. Susan says she also connected Watson with a friend of hers last year who wanted to get into sports massage, but that was not a contractor arrangement. Susan’s friend is now one of the 22 plaintiffs, though she declines to say which one.
