Several women have come forward to reveal very shocking and specific allegations of sexual misconduct against NFL player Deshaun Watson, Sports Illustrated reported on Friday.
Massage therapist Ashley Solis was the first woman to put her name and reputation on the line to accuse the NFL star of misconduct. The licensed therapist and business owner says that Watson made sexual advances when he came to her home for a massage session in March of 2020.
(The Associated Press)
In her lawsuit against Watson, Solis alleges that when she began massaging the 25-year-old player, he started telling her specific places on his body to do her work and to always use her hands instead of her fists or elbows. He also constantly directed her to his lower stomach and groin areas, she said.
Solis said that the “final straw” was when Watson actually placed his erect penis in her hand.
“She had just finished working on his leg and was moving toward his hip when he asked her to work on his abdominal muscles. As she began to focus on that area, she remembers his penis being in the way, so she asked him to readjust himself away from where she was working. Solis says Watson instead grabbed his penis and put it onto her hand,” Sports Illustrated explained.
“I just started crying. I couldn’t hold it in anymore,” Solis said. “I felt disgusting. He looked disgusting. I wanted to go shower and scrub myself until I bled. I just wanted him gone.”
Solis added that once she expressed her outrage and asked him to leave, Watson tried to argue that he didn’t want his reputation hurt and hoped her reputation would not be hurt if she told anyone.
Lauren Baxley, one of the 22 women suing the player, is also a licensed massage therapist. The 33-year-old body care expert came forward after Solis named herself publicly as one of Watson’s victims. Baxley alleges that Watson also accosted her in June of 2020.
(Carmen Mandato/Getty Images)
Baxley claims that Watson refused to drape a towel or sheet over himself when she came into the room to massage him and added, “From the very first minute of the session, he was exposing his genitals to me.”
During the massage session, Baxley said that Watson kept asking her to massage his glutes and toward his anus. Baxley also said that Watson used the session as a “veneer” to get her to look at and touch his genitals.
Baxley added that Watson told her to handle his penis if it “got in the way” of the massage. She said he told her she could “just grab it” and move it if she needed to. She also said that he touched his penis to her hand multiple times repeatedly to get her to handle it.
She feared speaking out, though. “I knew he could destroy my reputation as a professional massage therapist if he somehow turned it around that I had initiated some sort of sexual contact,” she explained. “I was terrified. Not just for my career, not just for my license getting revoked, but also for my personal relationship with my partner. … There were layers and layers to what was happening in my mind, but physically, I felt like I was chained to that table.”
All 22 women who filed lawsuits against Watson have similar stories. Thus far, the NFL has taken no action against Watson, but representatives for the league have interviewed both Solis and Baxley to pin them down over their allegations. Both women claim that the league’s investigators were obnoxious and interviewed them seemingly with the base assumption that the women are lying about Watson.
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