Six Women Say Justin Tucker Committed Sexual Misconduct During Massage Sessions
On Thursday, The Baltimore Banner published the accounts of six massage therapists who say the Ravens kicker acted inappropriately during sessions that took place from 2012 to 2016. The Ravens and the NFL are now looking into the matter.
On Thursday, two weeks after the Baltimore Ravens’ season ended in the divisional round of the NFL playoffs, The Baltimore Banner reported accounts from six women who said that Ravens kicker Justin Tucker engaged in sexual misconduct and inappropriate behavior during massage sessions that took place from 2012 to 2016.
The publication began an investigation into Tucker after receiving a tip in early January, and its report details the experiences of six massage therapists from spas around the Baltimore area who said that Tucker exposed his genitals during sessions—and in two cases made unwanted sexual contact with the therapists. Representatives for two local spas told the Banner that Tucker was banned from their establishments for inappropriate behavior. According to a spokesperson for the local spa chain Ojas, Tucker was “immediately terminated as a client” in 2014 when a massage therapist reported what occurred during a massage session with him.
Tucker’s attorneys have denied the accounts—saying they are “impossible to prove”—and the Ravens kicker also released a statement on Thursday calling them “unequivocally false” and accusing the Banner of “misconstruing events as nefarious” to “generate clicks.” The Ravens released a statement saying the team is aware of the story and “will continue to monitor the situation.” NFL spokesman Brian McCarthy made a similar statement, saying the league “will look into the matter.”
The accounts detailed in the Banner are horrifying, and in some cases are reminiscent of those from the dozens of women who filed civil lawsuits against Deshaun Watson in the early 2020s, which ultimately resulted in an 11-game suspension for the Browns quarterback in 2022. Five of the massage therapists interviewed by the Banner said that Tucker requested treatment on his pelvis or inner thigh while he had an erection and that he’d “repeatedly wiggled” his pelvis to shake off the sheets covering his genitals. Two of the women said that Tucker brushed up against them with his exposed penis. Three of the women said they believed Tucker ejaculated on the massage table after the sessions. Several women said they tried to take extra steps to keep the massages appropriate—putting heavy heating pads over Tucker’s pelvis or using one hand to keep him covered with a sheet or using a tightly wrapped “diaper drape” technique.
“He was continuously moving his hips,” one woman told the Banner. “Moving his penis, wiggling it, making it bounce, undoing the drapes.”
Another said, “We can tell if it’s intentional or just an accident, and this was intentional.”
None of the women interviewed in the story contacted the police after their interactions with Tucker, which, according to Kimberly Alexander, the president of the Alliance for Massage Therapy Education, is common in situations involving high-profile clients. That’s largely because of fear of public backlash and ridicule—and because cases like these are very difficult to prosecute. “They’re worried about their license; they’re worried about their reputation in the community; they’re worried about their family’s response to it,” Alexander told the Banner. At least one of the women who spoke out against Watson said she received death threats after she went public.
When the news of Watson’s initial six-game suspension broke in August 2022 (it was later increased to 11 games after a settlement between the NFL and the NFL Players Association), Ravens head coach John Harbaugh told the media that he was not at liberty to directly reveal his thoughts on the matter. But it wasn’t difficult to read between the lines. “I respect what [Ravens owner] Steve Bisciotti has created here—and [team president] Dick Cass—really 10 years ago,” Harbaugh said after a training camp practice. “And basically, what we decided—what Steve and Dick decided, we’re all still here: Ozzie, Eric, Pat Moriarty, that were involved with that—we’re kind of a zero tolerance. You gotta know the truth, you gotta try to understand the circumstances, but we’ve stayed away from that particular situation when we draft players [and] when we sign them as free agents.
“That’s Steve’s decision, and I’m glad we have that policy.”
Harbaugh’s comments were widely celebrated at the time. Though the coach didn’t directly condemn the league or the Browns for employing Watson after an NFL-sanctioned investigation found that the quarterback had made “unwanted sexual contact” with multiple women during massage sessions, he made it clear that the Ravens would not have rostered a player in a similar situation—and was one of the few NFL coaches or executives to voice the sentiment. Harbaugh’s strong stance on that situation again became relevant on Thursday after the Tucker news broke. And the team’s handling of this, as the case evolves, should reveal whether the Ravens actually do have a zero-tolerance policy for player misbehavior—or if it’s just “kind of a zero-tolerance” policy, to use Harbaugh’s exact wording.
It will also show whether this franchise, which is now 11 years removed from its shameful handling of Ray Rice’s domestic violence case, has learned from its past mistakes. Before video emerged of Rice knocking out his then-fiancée in a hotel elevator in 2014, the Ravens kept Rice on the roster and released a statement saying, “We know there is more to Ray Rice than this one incident.” Following a joint press conference between Ray and Janay Rice, the team’s official Twitter account posted a tweet that read, “Janay Rice says she deeply regrets the role she played the night of the incident”—and deleted it only after months of ridicule.
The NFL initially handed Rice a two-game suspension after conducting its own investigation but suspended him indefinitely when the footage from inside the elevator was published by TMZ shortly after the 2014 season began. The Ravens immediately released the star running back—with Harbaugh saying that “[the footage] is something we saw for the first time today … it changed things, of course”—and Rice didn’t play another snap in the NFL. Bisciotti later admitted that the team didn’t do enough work investigating the case before the footage of Rice striking his fiancée was released and apologized to fans for his handling of the situation.
The complete mishandling of the Rice case created a mess for the NFL, but it did lead to an overhaul of the league’s personal conduct policy, including how the commissioner’s exempt list could essentially serve as a paid suspension for players facing criminal charges or under an NFL investigation for domestic violence, sexual assault, or child abuse. Now it will be up to Roger Goodell to decide whether the NFL will investigate and whether Tucker will eventually be placed on the exempt list. (Watson never landed on the exempt list because he wasn’t criminally charged, and the Texans held him out of games during the 2021 season, though he remained on the active roster.) The team could look to recoup some of Tucker’s salary bonuses if the league does find that he violated the personal conduct policy. But that will be a drawn-out process, likely involving lawyers and independent arbiters.
Tucker is Baltimore’s all-time leading scorer and has been one of the most visible players in the area since breaking out as the league’s top kicker in the 2010s, signing various endorsement deals with local businesses over his 13-year career. He was a member of the Super Bowl–winning team during the 2012 season and represented the Ravens in seven Pro Bowls.
If the Ravens want to part ways with Tucker immediately, they’ll likely have to release him. Cutting the 35-year-old, who’s coming off the worst season of his career, would result in a $7.5 million dead cap hit and would cost Baltimore an additional $445,000 in 2025 cap space, per Spotrac. The team could make Tucker a post–June 1 cut, which would spread out his dead cap charge over two years and save the team $4.2 million in 2025 cap space. That may make more financial sense for the team, but Harbaugh’s suggestion that the Ravens may have a “zero tolerance” policy would imply their decision won’t be dictated by the league’s salary cap structure.
This is just the beginning of this story. More facts will be revealed over the coming months. But as things stand, six separate women and two spas say that Tucker engaged in reprehensible behavior. The Ravens will have to respond in more than a two-sentence statement at some point. And once again, we’ll all be watching to see what they do.
