From
THE DEFECTOR March 14, 2022
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A few months after the first lawsuit was filed,
Nia Reese Lewis-Smith told YouTube host Tasha K that she too had been hired to massage Watson, a total of three times, and she had to stop because of the escalation in Watson’s misconduct.
“The owner of the salon, she had introduced so many girls to Deshaun Watson,” Lewis-Smith said in her interview. “So I wasn’t, at that point in time, I was not the only one massaging him from the salon. Actually, the people she was inviting in didn’t even work at the salon, I don’t know where she was getting these people from.”
Lewis-Smith said she had a hard time saying no to working with Watson even though his behavior got worse with each appointment
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“Nobody really cared,” she told Tasha K. “I expressed my concerns to the owners of the salon, but she was really infatuated with the fact that we had Deshaun Watson as a client.”
Lewis-Smith did not name the spa owner in her interview. Per the court filings, another spa owner also has been dodging involvement in these lawsuits. Dionne Louis—a Houston spa owner who employed two of the women suing Watson—ignored her subpoena from Buzbee’s team in October, then tried and failed to get out of her deposition by filing a motion to quash. In December, Buzbee’s team filed an emergency motion to compel her deposition, and the court granted it.
In August, Defector spoke to Louis over the phone. She denied knowing anything about all three women, instead saying: “All of this is just about trying to get a buck. Nobody ain’t never said nothing until this guy [Buzbee] came out and said whoever had any kind of dealings with Deshaun, come forward.”
Louis said the police contacted her in June and got a statement from her. At the time we spoke in August, she said she hadn’t talked to Watson’s legal team but that she had screenshot of texts that prove that they had no issues with Watson.
“I have it and I have it prepared,” she said. “If they don’t come by then it’s no problem but if somebody come and they need proof of any of this, I have it.”
I visited Houston less than a week after speaking with Louis on the phone. She’d told me to come by anytime that week to speak with her more in person. But when I stopped by her business twice that week, she wasn’t there either time and neither of the employees present would discuss anything related to Watson with me. Louis stopped replying to texts or answering my calls. “I don’t get into that,” one employee said as she shut the spa’s front door on me.
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