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Is Deshaun Watson Done in Houston?

Vic Mackey

By Vic Mackey
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Nicole44

Nicole44 22027

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Interesting take from yahoo sports:

The Watson defense boiled down to three basic points:

1. He always had a reputation as a good guy.

2. Yes, some of the many, many massage sessions with the many, many massage therapists Watson hired, often off of Instagram, included sexual activity, but those were consensual acts. Meanwhile, the women who suggest Watson sought sex during their session were mistaken and he wasn’t pushing for it, demanding it or inappropriately forcing it even though he sometimes had sex during other sessions.

3. The plaintiffs' lawyer is a clown and a jerk.

If Hardin is going to win this one then it will require some incredible legal needle threading, because Nos. 1 and 3 don’t matter and No. 2 doesn’t make any sense.
——————

“When I told him, he was in disbelief,” Hardin said. “He asked me two or three times, ‘I forced her?’ And then he just started crying. That’s his reaction. And that’s the thing for you all to remember. We don’t cry about things we did.”

We don’t? What? There are prison yards full of tears all over America.
—————-

In a civil case, the jury needs to be only 51-percent convinced of one side of the story and essentially it is 22 women saying Watson did this and Watson saying he sort of sometimes did it but not in the way all the women recall it.

That’s where we are right now, about one month into this. Neither Watson's likability or the plaintiffs' attorney's unlikability matter.

Deshaun Watson’s defense matters, but if this is all there is, if Rusty Hardin doesn’t have a better explanation, then this is going to be one difficult fight ahead.
https://sports.yahoo.com/is-this-the-best-defense-deshaun-watson-has-against-22-women-225232779.html

 

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closetohumping

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31 minutes ago, Nicole44 said:

Interesting take from yahoo sports:

The Watson defense boiled down to three basic points:

1. He always had a reputation as a good guy.

2. Yes, some of the many, many massage sessions with the many, many massage therapists Watson hired, often off of Instagram, included sexual activity, but those were consensual acts. Meanwhile, the women who suggest Watson sought sex during their session were mistaken and he wasn’t pushing for it, demanding it or inappropriately forcing it even though he sometimes had sex during other sessions.

3. The plaintiffs' lawyer is a clown and a jerk.

If Hardin is going to win this one then it will require some incredible legal needle threading, because Nos. 1 and 3 don’t matter and No. 2 doesn’t make any sense.
——————

“When I told him, he was in disbelief,” Hardin said. “He asked me two or three times, ‘I forced her?’ And then he just started crying. That’s his reaction. And that’s the thing for you all to remember. We don’t cry about things we did.”

We don’t? What? There are prison yards full of tears all over America.
—————-

In a civil case, the jury needs to be only 51-percent convinced of one side of the story and essentially it is 22 women saying Watson did this and Watson saying he sort of sometimes did it but not in the way all the women recall it.

That’s where we are right now, about one month into this. Neither Watson's likability or the plaintiffs' attorney's unlikability matter.

Deshaun Watson’s defense matters, but if this is all there is, if Rusty Hardin doesn’t have a better explanation, then this is going to be one difficult fight ahead.
https://sports.yahoo.com/is-this-the-best-defense-deshaun-watson-has-against-22-women-225232779.html

 

He cried?  Oh in that case he’s innocent. 

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Beau Vine

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15 minutes ago, closetohumping said:

“When I told him, he was in disbelief,” Hardin said. “He asked me two or three times, ‘I forced her?’ And then he just started crying. That’s his reaction. And that’s the thing for you all to remember. We don’t cry about things we did.”

I feel like this needs to be a Surly NSAA thread.

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JFKFC

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2 hours ago, Macklemore said:

I think you’re right. Alief Elsik HS is right next to the Westpark Tollway. It’s immediately to the south of it.

Back in the day, I remember a gang of Alief Elsik and Hastings lads going to fight a smaller number of dudes from Sharpstown, and most of the Alief boys went to the hospital.

Edited by JFKFC
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Gourmand

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In a peripheral development to this story, Texans beat reporter Aaron Wilson has been fired from the Houston Chronicle because he went on WEEI in Boston a couple of weeks ago and said the following: 

“In his (Watson's) case, you know, it’s kind of you don’t negotiate with terrorists. People are demanding money, they’re asking for money. It kept escalating, it kept going up and up and up. You’re talking about more and more funds, I’m not going to say how much it got to, but my understanding is, you know, that there was an admission that, it was, you know, something, you know just that this was, you know, just a money grab.”

https://defector.com/football-writer-who-compared-women-suing-deshaun-watson-to-terrorists-no-longer-working-for-houston-chronicle/

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immamac

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32 minutes ago, nnm said:

Yeah. The problem isn’t Hardin. He’s playing the hand he’s dealt. And it’s a really crappy hand, that keeps getting crappier. 

This smells a lot like the client not telling the lawyer everything. The more he learns the less winnable the case looks.

If you tell your lawyer, I never did any of that stuff - this is a troll job. Your lawyer says cool, we can prove that by making them use their real names. 

Then when they use their real names and it turns out you actually did fucking sexually assault these people and you tell your lawyer oh, yeah I fucked some of them now that I think about it, but it was always consensual. 

Next phase is getting into the defense playing into a criminal trial instead of just this civil stuff. 

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Beantown Express 2.0

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24 minutes ago, immamac said:

This smells a lot like the client not telling the lawyer everything. The more he learns the less winnable the case looks.

If you tell your lawyer, I never did any of that stuff - this is a troll job. Your lawyer says cool, we can prove that by making them use their real names. 

Then when they use their real names and it turns out you actually did fucking sexually assault these people and you tell your lawyer oh, yeah I fucked some of them now that I think about it, but it was always consensual. 

Next phase is getting into the defense playing into a criminal trial instead of just this civil stuff. 

I am not a Watson fan in the slightest and haven’t really been following the story real closely but is there any proof these were not consensual?  I mean maybe he raped every one of them and did all sorts of bad things and if so he should be in prison the rest of his life OR maybe he just had sex with a bunch of these women and they agreed to it.  I am not defending him and I understand how hard this is on women that actually get raped to have to come forward and also live the rest of their life with the lasting mental and physical issues of being raped but there are also cases where the women realize they have a famous person or a star NFL QB and they can accuse him of something and maybe extort some money out of him.  Once again if there is proof of what he did he should be in prison and maybe I missed the proof and if so I am obviously wrong to consider maybe he is innocent in the “rape” thing but guilty of being a scumbag and hitting on his massage therapists and having sex with them.

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Gourmand

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29 minutes ago, immamac said:

This smells a lot like the client not telling the lawyer everything. The more he learns the less winnable the case looks.

Yes, I was actually thinking this as well. With everything we learn from Watson's defense it certainly seems that Hardin is not getting the full picture from his client. 

A friend of mine recently went through a messy work situation in a job she loved that culminated in her leaving her job and hiring a lawyer to pursue a sexual harassment claim against the owner of the business. Over the years she worked there, she became close friends with him and they would regularly spend time together away from the job in a strictly platonic (to her at least) manner. Being a smoke show woman, she was of course already in a relationship with someone else. Fast forward a year and a half when she breaks up with her boyfriend and Owner Guy thinks its his chance to get with her and starts becoming kinda aggressive and creepy and crosses boundaries she always thought were clear and stated. She enjoyed his friendship and let him know as much, so she would reiterate the Friend Zone thing, he'd apologize and they would move on.

Well, after she breaks up with boyfriend #2 and meets her current man (now engaged), his cycle of behavior accelerates and he becomes increasingly aggressive and creepier than ever, to the point where she feels like she can no longer even have any contact with him and tries to change her schedule at work so she can avoid him entirely. He gets drunk a number of times and sends texts or Instagram DMs that are clearly sexual in nature and he says shit like how much he's crazy about her etc. She knows she has no choice but to quit her job and then after quitting she finds out that said owner had groomed/harassed past employees as well. She was pissed about having to quit a job she loved because of his actions and she thought he would continue to do it again with some other employee so she decided to take legal action. 

They get into discovery mode with lawyers sending letters back and forth and his lawyer is adamant about their side not settling or giving anything, but defense attorney has no fucking clue what's about to hit him. Owner Guy never thought all those drunken texts and Insta DMs would be saved by her but they were. She screenshotted all of them and provided them to her attorney, and when defense atty was finally made aware of the scope of his client's behavior, he couldn't settle fast enough.

I think this is exactly the same situation with Watson. Rusty Hardin is fighting a losing battle, it's just a question of how much of his client's blood he wants to spill.

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immamac

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32 minutes ago, Beantown Express 2.0 said:

I am not a Watson fan in the slightest and haven’t really been following the story real closely but is there any proof these were not consensual?  I mean maybe he raped every one of them and did all sorts of bad things and if so he should be in prison the rest of his life OR maybe he just had sex with a bunch of these women and they agreed to it.  I am not defending him and I understand how hard this is on women that actually get raped to have to come forward and also live the rest of their life with the lasting mental and physical issues of being raped but there are also cases where the women realize they have a famous person or a star NFL QB and they can accuse him of something and maybe extort some money out of him.  Once again if there is proof of what he did he should be in prison and maybe I missed the proof and if so I am obviously wrong to consider maybe he is innocent in the “rape” thing but guilty of being a scumbag and hitting on his massage therapists and having sex with them.

Well there's 22 lawsuits and the stuff we have seen has been...not good. I'm not presuming guilt, but adding commentary to how things are going. As this thing develops further and further it keeps looking worse and worse from deshaun own camp, it's expected to get worse from the plaintiffs, but when the defense plays into the hands of the plaintiffs and the defense lawyer is known to be extremely competent it seems like the client is actually fucking up the case not the lawyer. 

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Beau Vine

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18 minutes ago, Gourmand said:

Yes, I was actually thinking this as well. With everything we learn from Watson's defense it certainly seems that Hardin is not getting the full picture from his client. 

A friend of mine recently went through a messy work situation in a job she loved that culminated in her leaving her job and hiring a lawyer to pursue a sexual harassment claim against the owner of the business. Over the years she worked there, she became close friends with him and they would regularly spend time together away from the job in a strictly platonic (to her at least) manner. Being a smoke show woman, she was of course already in a relationship with someone else. Fast forward a year and a half when she breaks up with her boyfriend and Owner Guy thinks its his chance to get with her and starts becoming kinda aggressive and creepy and crosses boundaries she always thought were clear and stated. She enjoyed his friendship and let him know as much, so she would reiterate the Friend Zone thing, he'd apologize and they would move on.

Well, after she breaks up with boyfriend #2 and meets her current man (now engaged), his cycle of behavior accelerates and he becomes increasingly aggressive and creepier than ever, to the point where she feels like she can no longer even have any contact with him and tries to change her schedule at work so she can avoid him entirely. He gets drunk a number of times and sends texts or Instagram DMs that are clearly sexual in nature and he says shit like how much he's crazy about her etc. She knows she has no choice but to quit her job and then after quitting she finds out that said owner had groomed/harassed past employees as well. She was pissed about having to quit a job she loved because of his actions and she thought he would continue to do it again with some other employee so she decided to take legal action. 

They get into discovery mode with lawyers sending letters back and forth and his lawyer is adamant about their side not settling or giving anything, but defense attorney has no fucking clue what's about to hit him. Owner Guy never thought all those drunken texts and Insta DMs would be saved by her but they were. She screenshotted all of them and provided them to her attorney, and when defense atty was finally made aware of the scope of his client's behavior, he couldn't settle fast enough.

 

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956 Worldwide

956 Worldwide 34447

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10 minutes ago, immamac said:

Well there's 22 lawsuits and the stuff we have seen has been...not good. I'm not presuming guilt, but adding commentary to how things are going. As this thing develops further and further it keeps looking worse and worse from deshaun own camp, it's expected to get worse from the plaintiffs, but when the defense plays into the hands of the plaintiffs and the defense lawyer is known to be extremely competent it seems like the client is actually fucking up the case not the lawyer. 

I’ll say this again, with 22 women alleging that he arranged for a massage via Insta then tried to turn it into a sexual encounter...the odds are that at least a couple of them did not welcome the attempt. No one has that much awesome game. 

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Patrick Bateman

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1 hour ago, 956 Worldwide said:

I’ll say this again, with 22 women alleging that he arranged for a massage via Insta then tried to turn it into a sexual encounter...the odds are that at least a couple of them did not welcome the attempt. No one has that much awesome game. 

Actually, defense has submitted another 18 who didn't feel anything sexually inappropriate, so we're actually up to at least 40 and Hardin said there were more who felt the same.  So really, it's probably more like at least 50 different MT's he stalked online for "massages" and then extra curricular activities.  Watson has a hot girlfriend, has money and power and could easily just go to a club if he wanted some strange, but no, this is some sort of weird fantasy with him built on power, seduction, leverage.  Dude has issues.  

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Nicole44

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Rusty’s main job is to either win this at trial or guide this through a mediation. There’s nothing he can do in the short term about Watson’s NFL career. So far, the attempts to restore his reputation in the eyes of the public haven’t been great but again that’s not his primary role. It’s to win at trial (since that is what he said they want.) no doubt they will attempt to consolidate all the cases/suits into one and ask for a gag order eventually. JMO. Unless they go to mediation.

There are a lot of problematic things for Watson’s defense right now. One would be why go through the ruse of borrowing a massage table from the Texans and getting referrals/recommendations from other players, staff etc... it makes it less likely that the acts that allegedly occurred were consensual.

Then there is this: the towel during the massage. The women who filed suit spoke of the towel in their accounts. Some suggested it made them uncomfortable. This use of the towel over a sheet during the massage. 
 

This was Before the 18 women Rusty brought forward to make statements on his behalf. The towel could be problematic. Sure many athletes use them over a sheet which is more common of a practice. But one of the 18 women who made a statement in his defense said the following:

During the massage, Deshaun was more comfortable using a towel than draping sheets over the table; this isn’t unusual at all. I have several clients that prefer using a towel over sheet. We began using a towel, and that became the norm. When I saw that the first lawsuit mentioned a towel, I chuckled because I gave him that idea. And it’s not inappropriate because they teach you in massage school that using a towel is okay. 

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JFKFC

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36 minutes ago, Nicole44 said:

And it’s not inappropriate because they teach you in massage school that using a towel is okay

I've been to over a dozen massage schools in 3 different countries. And if I learned anything, I learned that towel class counts as course credit at Texas Tech.

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Nicole44

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Then there is this woman who was his massage therapist for two and 1/2 years, Jasmine Brooks. While she was mainly sticking up for her profession she was also attempting to defend him as well.

Jasmine Brooks says she was Watson’s massage therapist for two-and-a-half years. She spoke exclusively with KHOU 11's Len Cannon about the Texans quarterback.  
 

She no longer has Watson as a client.

Brooks explained why when asked about the text messages released by attorney Tony Buzbee in a news conference earlier this week.

In the messages, Brooks told a friend that she stopped working with Watson “bc I was hearing to much stuff about him messing with other people, like other therapist and estheticians. He’s been doing a lot the last 3-4 months.”

Brooks, who has bachelor’s and master’s degrees in kinesiology from Texas Southern University, said the messages were taken out of context.

“Really, what I meant was, is Deshaun is working with a lot of people, he’s working with a lot of therapists, and I don’t know those people, I don’t know what they’re doing with him and I just wasn’t comfortable with continuing my work with him,” Brooks told Cannon.
https://www.khou.com/mobile/article/news/local/massage-therapist-watson/285-025a4385-24f4-4ba6-abbe-7aa026617147

 

 

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Nicole44

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Buzbee’s latest statement:

“I respect attorney Rusty Hardin,” Buzbee said. “He’s one of the best lawyers our great state has to offer. He’s a true legend. He is a colleague, and I consider him a friend. I hope he agrees. But today he conceded that his client gets two to three massages a week — that equates to more than a 150 massages yearly — outside the vast Texans organization that has trainers and massage therapists, etc. Watson sought these women out, according to the admissions of Mr. Hardin, via social media, particularly Instagram. Most if not all of the different women Watson reached out to by direct message. I think we can all agree that is a bit strange.

“But here is my problem: Mr. Hardin, in his press conference, also stated that, from his client’s perspective, some or more of these massage interactions with my clients, both licensed and unlicensed therapists, became sexual because they were ‘consensual.’ NO.

“I can tell you from my clients’ perspectives THESE INTERACTIONS WERE NOT CONSENSUAL. ‘No’ means no. That’s all.”

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closetohumping

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11 hours ago, Patrick Bateman said:

Actually, defense has submitted another 18 who didn't feel anything sexually inappropriate, so we're actually up to at least 40 and Hardin said there were more who felt the same.  So really, it's probably more like at least 50 different MT's he stalked online for "massages" and then extra curricular activities.  Watson has a hot girlfriend, has money and power and could easily just go to a club if he wanted some strange, but no, this is some sort of weird fantasy with him built on power, seduction, leverage.  Dude has issues.  

Right and Bill Cosby didn’t roofie every lady he met at a party. I’m sure phylishia rashad will vouch for his character 

 

14 of the 22 women are refiling and will reveal their identities 

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n64ra

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On 4/10/2021 at 9:44 AM, 956 Worldwide said:

I’ll say this again, with 22 women alleging that he arranged for a massage via Insta then tried to turn it into a sexual encounter...the odds are that at least a couple of them did not welcome the attempt. No one has that much awesome game. 

I take it you've never met me.

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Nicole44

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IN HIS LAWSUITS and in two news conferences at his office atop the Houston skyline, Buzbee has described Watson's alleged modus operandi as systematic.

Watson, he says, reached out to most of the women on social media, primarily Instagram, and insisted that they be alone when he showed up. He occasionally would seek appointments with women who told him that they'd never even done massage. "Well, can you do a massage?" Watson would ask, according to Buzbee.

In some instances, Buzbee says, Watson asked for photos of the therapists or dictated what he wanted them to wear during the sessions. In screen grabs of a direct message exchange Buzbee provided to reporters on Tuesday, Watson appears to comment on the image of a woman wearing a sports bra and spandex shorts.

"Something like this is fine," reads a direct message said to be from Watson to the woman. "It's hot here."

Often, according to the lawsuits, Watson would insist that no one else be around during the sessions. Watson would frequently insist on being covered only with a towel during the massage sessions rather than draped with a sheet, as is customary, Buzbee said. And, in some instances, he brought his own towel, which was closer in size to a "small washcloth," Buzbee said.

He asked some of the women to sign a nondisclosure agreement either before or after the massages, and Buzbee provided reporters a copy of that two-page agreement.

At least once he is said to have gone to unusual lengths to book a therapist he found on Instagram. In August 2020, according to one lawsuit, Watson purchased a plane ticket for an Atlanta-based therapist and flew her to Houston. A direct message released by Buzbee, said to be from Watson, includes the woman's itinerary, along with heart and rose emojis.

Another message sends the therapist an address for the Houstonian hotel.

"We will [meet] here," the message says. "I have a suite."

"Ok. Find table?" the woman asks. "Yep, Got one from my team," the reply says.

All those who have sued Watson mention in their lawsuits feeling threatened when, they say, Watson unexpectedly appeared naked during massages or became sexually aggressive. Beyond his physical stature, they say, his influence wasn't lost on them.

Lauren Baxley, the other plaintiff to make her name public last week, shared a statement through Buzbee that was addressed to Watson.

"With your millions of fans and followers, with your resources and income I felt both powerless, and trapped," Baxley said. "My work contract with my building was tied to my lease, and at the snap of your fingers I knew my good reputation, my home, and my career might be lost."

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JFKFC

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42 minutes ago, Nicole44 said:

He occasionally would seek appointments with women who told him that they'd never even done massage. "Well, can you do a massage?" Watson would ask, according to Buzbee.

This proves Deshaun is innocent. This is how he thought the world worked. It is obvious that the Texans were routinely starting players who had never even heard of American football before being asked to play. Massage, football, what's the difference? If you can dodge a wrench, you can dodge a ball. Swayze is much taller than Cruise, who is basically a goblin, and he isn't tall enough to give a massage, except in Alief. 

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Nicole44

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4 minutes ago, JFKFC said:

This proves Deshaun is innocent. This is how he thought the world worked. It is obvious that the Texans were routinely starting players who had never even heard of American football before being asked to play. Massage, football, what's the difference? If you can dodge a wrench, you can dodge a ball. Swayze is much taller than Cruise, who is basically a goblin, and he isn't tall enough to give a massage, except in Alief. 

It certainly points to an addiction to a certain type of massage. I don’t know this helps the plaintiffs though? Buzbee’s last statement was how he highly regarded Rusty. It’s strange shit. 

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