Deshaun Watson is coming to the Browns to build his legacy. I hope that decision doesn't ruin Cleveland's.
Team owners knew about the 22 women who have accused him of sexual misconduct, and they hired him anyway. Their indifference has made Cleveland the target of outrage that will endure for years.
My friend Sue’s love affair with the Cleveland Browns began in 1981, when she met quarterback Brian Sipe in the parking lot after a game with the Buffalo Bills.
She was 14 and barely 5 feet tall when she ferreted her way through a throng of fans because she was worried about an injury he had sustained on the field.
“Are you OK?” she asked Sipe. He nodded and touched her face, which she vowed never to wash again, and then signed a scrap of paper she had been holding in her hand.
Sipe’s autograph is in a frame in Sue’s home, along with a 1988 photo of her elbow-to-elbow with Browns quarterback Bernie Kosar. There’s also a framed 1993 photo of Sue standing on the field on game day, high-fiving a Browns player as he ran past. That shot came about after a friend who was a Plain Dealer photographer gave her a press ID and a camera she didn’t know how to use.
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I’ve been with Sue for exactly one game, in which she transformed from one of my best and kindest friends into a growling gargoyle creating new, on-the-spot profanities I will never unhear. At one point, I looked at her aghast. “I warned you,” she said. And then she started yelling again at the TV.
Last Friday, Sue was in her car listening to an interview about baseball on sports radio when an excited voice interrupted with breaking news: The Cleveland Browns had acquired Houston Texans Deshaun Watson. He is a quarterback of heralded talents who just a week earlier had escaped indictment but faces nearly two dozen civil claims of sexual misconduct from March 2020 to March 2021.
I was Sue’s first call, and she was inconsolable. “We got that bad guy,” she said. “We just went from the lovable losers that everyone cheered for to the most hated team in the NFL.”
'Don't ever talk about this'
Much of the ensuing coverage of this trade has extolled the many talents of Deshaun Watson, as if somehow this might temper our view of the harm this 26-year-old man has been accused of inflicting on women, over and over.
Twenty-two women have sued Watson in civil court alleging sexual assault and sexual misconduct. Their accounts of encounters with him paint a picture of a serial offender.
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Two women say Watson forced them to perform oral sex; one said she blacked out from fear.
Other women allege Watson groped and ejaculated on them or in front of them. One woman said Watson forced her hands onto his penis and later told her, "I will not have you sign a NDA but don't ever talk about this." Another woman described a similar assault and said that, when she abruptly ended the massage she was giving him, Watson told her, "I know you have a career and a reputation, and I know you would hate for someone to mess with yours, just like I don't want anyone messing with mine."
Watson has denied all the allegations. In a news conference last April, his attorney said Watson did engage in sex acts during these massage appointments in various states, but said they were consensual.
'Humble, sincere, and candid'
Browns owners Jimmy and Dee Haslam hired him anyway, handing him, as New York Times’ Kurt Streeter wrote, “the fattest guaranteed contract in N.F.L. history ... five years, $230 million, every dollar guaranteed.”
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The Cleveland Browns' public statement began, “We spent a tremendous amount of time exploring and investigating …”
Interestingly, these intrepid investigators failed to talk to attorney Tony Buzbee, who is representing the 22 women. Nor did they interview any of Watson’s accusers.
In that same statement, the Cleveland Browns' front office wants us to know that Watson was “humble, sincere, and candid.”
My, they think we’re stupid.
An NFL policy on sexual assault could allow for Watson to be suspended after a league investigation for a minimum of six games, but as ESPN reported, he will feel no financial sting: “Watson's new $230 million contract with Cleveland will include only $1 million in base salary for the first year. In other words, if Watson is suspended, he would lose less than $60,000 per game lost."
Well, Watson’s defenders say, the Harris County grand jury failed to indict him.
Finish that thought: He wasn’t indicted in Texas, where a new law deputizes citizen bounty hunters to turn in women who get abortions after their sixth week of pregnancy. It’s that Texas.
Outrage turns into action – and money
But here’s what’s happening in Cleveland. Overnight, after the Friday announcement of Watson’s hire, donations started pouring into the Cleveland Rape Crisis Center. “We woke up on Saturday and hundreds upon hundreds of donations had come in,” the CRCC’s Sarah Trimble told me. “We became aware of the outrage of the community.”
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Calls to CRCC’s hotline have spiked by 130%, she said. “We had individuals triggered by the news of Watson’s hire. They wanted to know, ‘How could this happen?’ ” Survivors are reaching out, many of them for the first time. “They had buried it and the headlines were bringing that back up,” Trimble said. “They just had to tell someone.”
Later that Saturday morning, CRCC issued a statement in stark contrast to the one from the Cleveland Browns:
“We understand the story surrounding Deshaun Watson joining the Cleveland Browns team is triggering for far too many of our friends and neighbors. For those who need additional support, please know Cleveland Rape Crisis Center is available to you 24/7/365.
“To the community we say, we see you. We hear your outrage. We feel it too. Every click. Every post and every tweet. Every donation sends a clear message.”
As of 10 a.m. Tuesday morning, the CRCC had received 1,750 donations. Thirty-four percent of them included a note or comment referring to Watson’s hire by the Browns. Thirty-three percent made a donation of $22, in support of the 22 women who have accused Watson.
What of the fans?
I have lived in Cleveland or a neighboring suburb for more than 40 years and been surrounded by Browns fans all my life. To express my wish for the fans is to engage in magical thinking: I want them to hold the Browns accountable with their dollars – for as long as Watson is quarterback. I know this will not happen in large numbers. But I am unwilling to blame Browns fans for the enduring damage unloaded by its owners.
Fans have flooded social media with messages of disappointment and outrage. Many of them sound like my friend Sue, who stood in my driveway Monday and said, “How could the Browns do this? How could they put us in this situation?”
No matter how devoted, sports fans have no power to decide a team’s fate. This decision falls on the shoulders of Jimmy and Dee Haslam, and their enablers. As the Browns public statement makes clear, they knew the harm Watson’s hire might inflict on countless survivors of rape and sexual assault. They hired him anyway.
What I wonder: Did they even consider what hiring Deshaun Watson would do to the reputation of Cleveland and this entire region of Ohio? We are now the place that thinks so little of women that we will pay their alleged abuser $230 million to come play with us.
Again, I turn to Sarah Trimble, who has spent more than a decade advocating for survivors. When celebrities get a pass for alleged abuse, the message to survivors is painfully clear: “Their stories, their victimization and their trauma, do not matter. And it sends a message to people who may be at risk for future perpetration that it doesn’t matter, either.”
There’s also this: As Trimble reminded me, more than two-thirds of sexual assaults are never reported. The chance that a perpetrator will spend even one day in jail is 2%.
Jimmy and Dee Haslam knew about the 22 women who were willing to speak out against Deshaun Watson, and they hired him anyway. Their indifference to human suffering has made Cleveland and its sports fans the target of outrage and derision that will endure for years.
That is the Haslams’ legacy, and no amount of money will ever erase it. Guaranteed.
Connie Schultz is a columnist for Paste BN. She is a Pulitzer Prize winner whose novel, "The Daughters of Erietown," is a New York Times bestseller. Reach her at CSchultz@usatoday.com or on Twitter: @ConnieSchultz