With three blockbuster tales of reporting the allegations of 16 different women accusing Baltimore Ravens’ kicker Justin Tucker of inappropriate behavior during massage therapy appointments more than a decade ago, reporter Julie Scharper of The Baltimore Banner answers all of Nestor’s questions about how the story came to light and the journalism, reporting and fact-checking done by their staff to confirm and write these “serious and concerning” stories.
Nestor Aparicio discusses the Justin Tucker scandal with Julie Scharper from the Baltimore Banner. Scharper details the investigation process, starting with a tip in early January about Tucker’s inappropriate behavior with massage therapists. Over 48 hours, they identified and interviewed six massage therapists who had firsthand experiences with Tucker between 2012 and 2016. Despite Tucker’s denials and the challenges of corroborating such claims, the Banner’s investigation revealed a pattern of inappropriate behavior. The NFL is also investigating, with interviews conducted at the law firm representing the massage therapists.
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
Justin Tucker, Baltimore Banner, massage scandal, sexual misconduct, investigation, massage therapists, NFL investigation, corroboration, legal team, social media, anonymous sources, accountability, statute of limitations, professional conduct, trauma.
SPEAKERS
Julie Scharper, Nestor Aparicio
Nestor Aparicio 00:00
Be welcome home. We are Baltimore positive W, N, S T. Am 1570 this. This is going to be a good segment here. I’m wearing my faith Lee shirt, because we’re gonna be back down to faith. He’s doing the Maryland crab gate tour, presented by our friends at the Maryland lottery. Have the match eight ball scratch offs to give away. Also some delicious shrimp salad. I’m looking forward to baseball season. We are doing a cup of Super Bowl. I was delinquent last month with one date on that. So we’re going to see our friends from preparing for tomorrow, as well as the American Cancer Society and a whole bunch of other people. I think Mark vivid on is stopping by March 6 in the afternoon, stop by and see us at Fayetteville. We’ll be doing some stuff before Oreo games this year. This is a segment that I, you know, I’ve done some research on this. I don’t have copious notes. I just have my own experiences. And what I’ve been reading in the Baltimore banner, and I saw that Julie sharper and Justin Fenton and the team at the Baltimore banner was on with Dan levitard. If you had a chance to catch that. There’s been so much background. There was a podcast that was done in the very beginning about the reporting being done. And I guess for this segment, we will go through some of the details, the lurid, salacious details of the Justin Tucker scandal. But as a recovering former used to be journalist and forever journalist. I’m interested in how the stories get told. Julie sharper is here she is from the Baltimore banner. I can honestly I don’t know that I’ve ever really met Julie. I know members of her team. We are cut of the same Baltimore Sun cloth, and I think you’re one of those LinkedIn people, Julie, if I put you up that we have a lot of mutual journalistic bloodline, things going on that literally, I was sitting with one of your friends, and mutual friends with lots of friends, when your incredible story broke a couple Thursdays ago. And just as an East Side tradition, I was sitting at Pizza Johns having a pizza with Jen Marsh when the biggest story of the year happened, and I know you put a lot of time and effort into it before I got up and excuse myself from Pete Johns Justin Tucker had already called the report, and you and journalist and kind of all of us, lots of names that I will list, maybe later if I feel like going back and reading. But I did want to give the story a little bit of oxygen. I’ve been waiting a couple weeks to have you all on. But I just want you to know before we start just tip of the cap for the journalism and doing the hard dirty work that and getting called the names that you get called when you do it right when you do it. But all of you have stood tall in this, and I appreciate your time. So thanks for coming on.
Julie Scharper 02:40
Thank you, Nestor, happy to be here. Well, let’s start at the beginning.
Nestor Aparicio 02:43
I you know, I don’t want to be reiterative on the lebatard stuff, and I’m just going to assume, and this is a terrible assumption on my part, that anybody that’s watching this, that’s clicked on this, that’s listening to this, wherever they are, they’ve read all of the work, because that’s just always a really, really poor assumption. But for my purposes, I’m going to try to not have you reiterate all of the stories of 16 people, but I’m much more interested in how these stories are put together. Because when Tucker comes after the journalism, the tabloid, the select all of these things. For in my opinion, not just Pulitzer worthy, a prize winning, all that you all are as journalists, with your legal team and all the things that you need to do for me to be sitting in pizza Johnson just to see that piece. I knew that a lot went into that, and I guess this was Justin Fenton’s sort of out in town, hearing things correct. So back
Julie Scharper 03:39
in early January, on January 9, Justin Fenton, who’s been my friend and colleague for almost 20 years now, got a call from a buddy who said, Hey, man, I just, you know, had this strange experience where I was at a party a few days ago and then I was just at my barber shop. And at both places, people were talking about these allegations or rumors that Justin Tucker had acted inappropriately with massage therapists and was banned from spas in the area. Um, So Justin, here’s that tip goes to our sports team. Tip comes to me as well. Justin, I have teamed up on a lot of stories, especially involving sexual abuse or harassment. And some of our ravens reporters happen to jump on Twitter X and search for Justin Tucker and massage, and lo and behold, there’s a few tweets about this going back several tweets, tweets really going back a few years. And so we’re like, well, that’s interesting. Like, that’s. You know that that’s quite a lot of rumors floating around, but still at that point, you know, journalists get tips all the time that don’t pan out. And you know, we were not at that point thinking that we were necessarily ever have a story about this, but we’re just thinking, this is this is intriguing, that we know someone who heard people talking about this in two spots, and then we go to social media and we see these social media posts. So I go ahead and follow all these folks on X who had tweeted about at some point so that I can direct message them. One of them follows me back pretty quickly, and I message this person and say, you know, Hey, I saw you tweeted about this. We’re curious. We’re kind of looking into this. Do you know anything about it? Because, as you know, Nestor, a lot of times people are saying stuff online that they don’t know anything about. Didn’t have a lot of hopes. And he said, Well, actually, I do. A woman that I went to high school with is a massage therapist, and a couple years ago, she posted that she had had this first hand experience. And I was like, interesting, you know, can you you show me those Facebook posts? And he’s like, Yeah, I’ll get you some screenshots. So he’s gone 10 minutes because he’s digging through her Facebook page and gets them take screenshots where she’s saying, hey, this happened to me, and friends of hers are saying, Oh, I remember when that happened to you. One person said, oh, yeah, that happened to me, too. So I reach out to this person on Facebook. And again, you know how these things go? A lot of times people say that I don’t want this to come to a reporter or, you know, I don’t actually want to talk about this now that a reporter is reaching out to me, although I will say at the time that she posted this, friends of hers had tagged different media outlets and tagged the Ravens. So I contact her on
Nestor Aparicio 06:56
Facebook, on the Facebook, on Facebook, under her name, in front of her whole under
Julie Scharper 07:00
Well, I sent her a private message, yeah, no,
Nestor Aparicio 07:03
no, but she had put this out on Facebook for her world, right? Yes. So whenever 500 809 would, you know, we, we could play the phone booth game, then how things like that would happen? Okay, Exactly,
Julie Scharper 07:13
yep, yeah. So I messaged her, and she’s like, You know what? I have been wanting this story to come out forever, like this was, this was very upsetting to me. I’m, you know, I it really bothers me when I see everyone talk about him being such a lovely person, because this was my experience, and it was, it was really troubling. Um, so I talked to her. She tells me her story. So she’s the first, she
Nestor Aparicio 07:41
tells you on a phone, a zoom, a sit down, a call like, Hey, how are you reporting on this very anonymity, right? I mean, because they, and these aren’t people talk to my lawyer too. These are people saying, I’ll talk to you as long as you don’t use my name, basically, right?
Julie Scharper 07:54
Yeah, she was, she was, she was afraid to use her name. She was afraid of retaliation, worried, you know, that between crazed fans or the organization or, you know, she didn’t know what, but she was, she was, her
Nestor Aparicio 08:08
friends knew about this, everybody. She was not, you know, the next cocktail party she went to after she posted this, people were saying to her, I can’t believe you had that experience. It was that public. Wow, that’s, that’s amazing, yeah.
Julie Scharper 08:20
And in fact, many of her Facebook friends who had commented on this back in in 2022 said, you know, oh, yeah, I remember when you told me about that. I remember when that happened to you. So. So she tells me her her story. She had worked at OGIS. She had an experience with him in 2014 so she tells me her account, and she says, You know what, another woman I worked with also had a similar experience, and this person had had commented on the Facebook post. So I said, Oh, could you please put me in touch with her? And she did, and she also added me to a private Facebook group for massage therapist in Maryland, and so then she puts a post in there, and it’s, it’s a bit vague. I tried to put a post up first, and it didn’t get approved. She puts up a post that’s sort of vague, that said, Hey, I had an experience with an NFL player in Baltimore a few years ago acting inappropriately. You know, I’m talking to a reporter, and I’m wondering if anyone else had this experience and would like to share it, because this was sort of, this was out there. You know that this was something that other massage therapists knew, and we saw that, because as soon as this post went up, within a few hours, there were dozens of comments, and people said, Oh yeah, I’ve heard about this. This happened to a friend of mine, or I heard this happened at this spa. I used to work at this spa, and I heard it happened there. Now, Julie,
Nestor Aparicio 09:52
let me. Let me get this reset. Julie sharpers here from the from the Baltimore banner, um, I said the other word, but I won’t. Um, I. I The timeline from Fenton coming in to you seeing a Facebook status to you being on the phone and now on this massage chat board is 72 hours or a week.
Julie Scharper 10:16
No, it was more like 48 hours. Quick.
Nestor Aparicio 10:18
Okay, so this is, this is that early January period? Okay, yep, came
Julie Scharper 10:22
in Thursday afternoon, and I worked on it all throughout the weekend. Was fair enough, talking with people, you know, meeting with people seeing records that that backed all of this up and and so. So these other massage therapists commented on this Facebook post and said, hey, you know this? This happened to a friend of mine at this spot this time. Or I know about this. I know this happened at this spa around this time. So you know, I’m communicating with Justin, I’m communicating with our editors. I’m communicating with our awesome ravens reporters, Jonah Schaefer and Gianna Hahn, I’m communicating with our top editors. We decide to bring in another reporter, Brenna Smith, who’s really great at sort of finding folks online. So now we’ve got three investigative reporters working on this and and we start sort of backtracking, because people are telling us, you know, oh, it happened at a spa called apothecary. It happened at a spa called 921, you know, it happened to a woman I know. I can’t, I don’t know her, her name now, because she changed it when she got married, but her first name is this, and her maiden name was that. And so we’re going through Facebook, we’re going through LinkedIn, we’re going through Tiktok, Instagram, trying to find these folks going in the in the way back machine to look at employment listings. You know, who was listed on these spa websites back in the day and in this you know, it takes some time, but before by Tuesday, I had spoken to four massage therapists who had first hand experiences with him, who told me they had first hand experiences with him. And then, I think it was about a by a week or so later, we had talked to six people who said they had these firsthand. Yeah,
Nestor Aparicio 12:27
and I’m wondering at what point it’s, you know, what point it becomes the stories 468, 10, because it’s that’s been the the randomly bizarre part of this is the minute you reported that people were yelling at me, calling me friends in my world that knew these people. I’ve been here my whole life. And it clearly, it never came to my desk. And I like, I never, never hit me, but it hit everybody. And it hit everybody pretty quickly. And I think the three rounds of reporting and what I heard on the streets the first weekend where people couldn’t get through your pay wall, then you down the paywa, and then Tucker fought back, and it was just sort of this cash grab. This is why I was missing fields. And I’m thinking all the story, and when you and Paul and everybody put out the initial the podcast, I’m like, no, no, no, this thing. But this thing didn’t even happen until this calendar year. This hasn’t been some ongoing six month witch hunt by your organization at all that this was an incredibly fast moving investigation police departments would like to move along this quickly with this many witnesses on things. So
Julie Scharper 13:36
yeah, I mean, and we were working to corroborate all of these accounts, because it wasn’t enough that we talked to these folks and heard their stories, but we wanted proof that they worked at these spas. We talked to their colleagues who they had shared their stories with at the time. We talked to we talked to family members that they had told this do we talk? How many
Nestor Aparicio 14:00
references is enough? Hey, yeah. How many do you need to vibe out? And that’s one of the reasons I ask you these zooming people. You sitting with people. There’s something about like talking to them face to face. That’s a different thing. You being a female. And all of these, these were all female massage there, but there are no men yet, right, correct? All
Julie Scharper 14:18
the, all the people who have shared their accounts with us are women. It was interesting because at first we were hearing from a lot of women who were quite young when this happened to them, like in their early 20s. And I was we were wondering if that was a pattern. But actually, as time went on, we talked to some people who were older, who were in their later 30s and 40s, when they say that they had these experiences. So, you know, it was, it’s a, it’s sort of a broad cross section of women, you know, different demographics. You know, there’s not like, kind of a clear. Pattern in in the massage therapist who came forward with, with these stories and, and I’m saying came forward, but you know, I’ve made this point before, and I’ll make it again. Certainly, these first six massage therapists, we found them. It wasn’t that they came forward. They didn’t find us. They weren’t expecting to tell their stories to the media. It was that we were doing the detective work and connecting the dots. And someone was telling us, oh, you know, talk to Jane Doe, who worked at Qg at this time period. And we’d find Jane Doe, and we’d say, Hey, we’re working on this story. Do you know anything about this? And she said, Oh, I sure do. I would love to tell you my story. Did
Nestor Aparicio 15:45
you run into anyone there who said, Yeah, I’m one of them. But I don’t want to talk about it, because when the six happened, I had two people reach to me and say, I know a girl. And my first thought wasn’t, well, I want them on my radio show. My first thought was, well, I wonder if they’re one of the six, and if they’re not, they should call Julie. You know what? I mean, that’s where that was the advice I gave to people in the first Julie, 12 hours before I went to bed. I mean, like the first night on Thursday, two people reached to me, and I said, Well, if they want to tell me their story, I mean, that’s cool and all, but it’s not my story. And I said, I can put them in touch with and you know, I know Chris Gorman, and I know Justin, and I know I don’t know you. I don’t we’ve, I don’t, I don’t think, yeah, I don’t think we’ve ever met, though, I don’t think we have Yeah, but, and I almost said the other word with the three letters, because you were there longer than you were at the banner. Julie sharper is here. She is one of the fantastic, fearless reporters at the Baltimore banner, along with Justin. And I want to give Brenna some love too, because she was great on the levitard show. I would have invited all three of you, but I’ll just do it separately, and it’ll be more. This is the compelling part for me. Was reaching to you and saying, This is a woman speaking to other women about trauma. I’m not the right doctor for that. I’m not the right priest for that, a rabbi in that way, on a reportorial way where this is really sensitive, and for their credibility, their safety, their anonymity, to be able to really tell a full story, I think a woman’s going to tell a woman something differently, and maybe more than if it feels uncomfortable. And I know this is where you’re training, my training, even though sometimes I don’t, I’m not the best at taking the softest edge with with talking to people, but certainly in this circumstance, these are people you’re reaching to who are sharing a secret, quite frankly, that they’ve wanted to share. But back to that original question, did you ask anyone? And they said, but no, I’m not, not today.
Julie Scharper 17:49
Yes, there, there are several people. There are several people that I have messaged directly. There’s several people I know of I know their first and last names, and I’ve even seen written accounts who have not yet, who haven’t spoken with us. I do want to make a really important point here, which is that Justin Tucker has denied all of these allegations. He has he hired a legal team which sent a detailed letter to us in which they denied all of these allegations. He has posted a lengthy statement on X denying all of the allegations. So I want to be very clear that he has said that you know he knows nothing about this, and the thought of hurting or upsetting anyone is, you know, very troublesome to him. But I also, of course, will say that we have spoken to 16 massage therapists who have reported these accounts of inappropriate sexual behavior during massage therapists. You know, another point I want to make, and because I’ll, I’ll see this come up in comments, is that people say, you know, Oh, these are, these are shady massage parlors. And I want to be clear that these are massage therapists. They are body workers. They are licensed professionals who go through training. They go through courses. They are licensed by the state. They have to take an exam. They have ongoing education credits. These are people who know that if you have pain in your shoulder, just where to what tendon on your back you need to work on to get that they’re health professionals. They are people who really care about the health of the people that they work on. They are absolutely positively not sex workers and and all of the massage therapists that I spoke to, it talked about how I’m. Usual this behavior was that they saw that that they had maybe encountered someone one or two other times in their career who might have been engaged in some sort of behavior like this, and often it was, you know, someone who was kind of confused about what type of business they were patronizing. So they were really clear that that the behavior that they described Tucker engaging in was not something that they saw from other clients almost ever. You know, people said, I, you know, I’ve been massage therapist 10, 1215, years, and I’ve never seen another man’s genitals while giving him a massage. So I just want to make that point clear, because when I see people comment that, I’m like, gosh, I don’t think they actually have read the story. And I know that massage therapists, the ones that we spoke to, and just others, find it really troubling when they see those comments out there. That’s the
Nestor Aparicio 21:04
first thing I did, because Luke is my reporter, and he’s like, I don’t really, I don’t have 30 minutes to sit here and talk about Justin Tucker’s massages, other than how it relates to kicking on the team, right? And he had never had a massage. And it didn’t occur to me that other people don’t have massages like, like, I’ve been getting massage for 30 years. I’ve had no less than 50 humans work on this tired, old, creaky body of mine at 56 and I just can’t fathom in, I mean, on the four different continents, when I’m flying places, and just the professional nature that what you just said, and you said it on the levitard show that it goes beyond saying, but it doesn’t, because I think there’s so many misconceptions, and I think that the Sean Watson thing in the football vernacular, and all of that really has led the NFL in now to investigate this. And so where’s the NFL investigation versus the banner investigation, and you would have to give these women up in order for them to find the actual women, because you promised that man and image. So I, I’m just trying to figure out what’s the NFL
Julie Scharper 22:10
Good question. Yeah, okay, so after I spoke with the first massage therapist about, like, a week or so after that at this, you know, and at that point, I had talked to several others as well. She contacted an attorney who was recommended by a friend of hers. The attorney’s name is Michael Belsky. He’s with I always get the order of this acronym confused, but I think it’s sbwd law firm, a downtown law firm. They’ve represented a lot of plaintiffs in sexual abuse cases. And she contacted him, and you know, he said, Okay, I’ll take this on. It’s, you know, it’s, it’s kind of pro bono work at this point,
Nestor Aparicio 23:03
my lawyer I’ve talked to said that there’s no case because of statute. I mean, all the things that you guys have reported, yes, yeah,
Julie Scharper 23:09
right. So our understanding is that, from a criminal perspective, it would be very hard to bring charges and repass the statute of limitations for a criminal case from a and I should say, because I don’t, I don’t think we’ve said this yet, that all of the allegations that we have heard are took place between 2012 when Tucker was a rookie, to 2016 we have not ever spoken to anyone who had an allegation after 2016 we have No idea why. We have no idea what that means, but that is just the pattern that we have seen. So it also appears to be passed the statute of limitations to bring a civil case against him. And I don’t you know, with everyone I’ve talked to is kind of like we’re not doing this for to get attention. We’re not doing this to get money. We’re just doing this because we have found this troubling. We still find it troubling, and we want there to be some sort of accountability. So Michael Belsky is the attorney who’s representing these women. He has not commented directly to us about this, but we have talked to some of the massage therapists who have talked to NFL investigators. It appears that the NFL investigators have reached out to the women who are working with belsky’s firm, and they have had, it sounds like interviews that have happened at that law firm. We know they were there last week for, I think, two days, and interviewed of several people. We had also heard they were coming back this week and possibly in the future. The NFL has not disclosed a lot of details to us, but. The Law Firm, I think because the NFL is not talking, a law firm isn’t talking so we’re really sort of hearing this from massage therapists who who have talked to these investigators. What I gather is that these are some of the same investigators who worked on the Deshaun Watson case, they’re women. The massage therapists that I’ve talked to felt that they were were very empathetic and open minded, and they felt that these were productive conversations. They were lengthy conversations, you know, so you
Nestor Aparicio 25:38
have they have reported back to you that they have told the NFL what they told you, essentially, right?
Julie Scharper 25:44
Yeah, okay, and several of them correct. They were lengthy conversations, too lengthier
Nestor Aparicio 25:48
than even you had. How long were your conversations with these ladies? Julie,
Julie Scharper 25:53
oh, gosh, it just varied from person to person. You know it. I think most of them had very clear memories of, you know, what had happened. And, you know, I like to ask all sorts of questions, to just kind of to understand where people are coming from, and also to vet them, to do my due diligence, you know. So I would say, I probably talked to each person for at least an hour in an initial conversation, but then followed up with more questions. Fact checking, verification. You know, who can you put me in touch with? Who could corroborate this account? Who can say, Oh yeah, she told me that happened at this time. So, you know, I’m always looking for receipts, text messages or social media posts that they put up at the time that verified this. Oh, and Nestor, I have to tell you one of the really fascinating parts in reporting all of this. So an editor at the banner, who used to be an editor at The Sun back in 2016 two of his reporters were talking to a massage therapist who contacted them, who was at the Qg, which is one of The spas where this allegedly occurred, we’ve talked to three massage therapists from the Qg who said they had these experiences there and so so this editor in had recalled that this a massage therapist from the Qg had been talking to some reporters in 2016 and shared with them an account that she had written and that had been signed by her supervisor, that she shared with the reporters and a photo of the sheets After Tucker had been in for a massage and so we, you know, as we started reporting this story, this editor said, Oh my gosh, I remember that this, you know, these Sun reporters were trying to chase this. So we contacted the sun reporters. I actually happened to run into one at the public library a couple, actually, after the first story ran. And, you know, they they had since left the sun. They no longer had access to those email accounts, but they remembered that this had happened, and they, they had a vague memory of what her account was. And so that massage therapist actually reached out to us after that first story ran, she reached out to us that same day. It ran on a Thursday, exactly three weeks after we got the tip, and she reached out to us that Thursday. We talked to her right away, and her story and the accounts of two other people who had worked at Qg ran in a second story, which ran on the Saturday after that first story ran. So that was another little piece of information that we had, you know, because we had, you know, we saw the post on Twitter. I saw the screenshots of this Facebook post. I saw all the replies in the massage therapists private Facebook group, and then we had this editor and these former Sun reporters who recalled hearing from a massage therapist back in the day who had this kind of account. So all of that, you know, it just felt like we were putting together a puzzle, and we kept finding these puzzle pieces. So by the time that woman contacted us, after the first story ran, you know, I I kind of already knew her story before I even talked to her, because I’d heard about her from other people
Nestor Aparicio 29:58
on the radio. It’s Julie sharper. From the Baltimore banner on all reporting on the Justin Tucker scandal, I got a lot of questions, but let’s start with this one. Did any of these people? And by the way, I’m I’ve had a massage at the quintessential gentleman as well. I lived downtown for 20 years. It was three blocks from my house. Did any of these people in that era call the Ravens? Or, I’m just thinking, you know, my my wife’s sister was massage therapist. My wife would have thought about getting into the massage business as well, because it was something she and her sister were toying with 20 years ago, right? And I’m thinking, if my wife worked at ohas or a high end $125 an hour, and this happened with that person, my wife, my sister, whomever it is, go to their boss, and then the boss says, Well, what are we going to do about it? And I was processing all of this the day the story came out, because I’m out hearing people speak about this without reading your piece. And there was just all of this nonsense as social media is. And I started to piece together, thinking, okay, if I’m a young lady and this happens to me, who could I tell my husband, my boyfriend, my girlfriends, my boss? What would my boss do about it? My boss would say, hold on. We got six other ravens coming in here this week. There’s a lot of money here. Are you sure that? Well, we’ll just get somebody out. We’ll get Joe to work on him, or whatever it would be to keep the business or keep the but to not be believed would be inconceivable to me, that if someone came to me and said, Somebody tried, as I humorously said, last month, I went into a massage place in Chinatown in New York for the first time in my life, there was a sign on the wall last month, a few months ago, it said, No Hanky Panky. And I said, that kind of sums up that this is not that kind of place, but I’ve never been in a place where that signs me up, because I’ve just never been in that kind of place where this just, it’s it’s verboten, you just don’t do it. And now I’m thinking, what is the SPA’s responsibility to their massage therapist to protect this person or to point out something that may be predatorial when it’s going on repeatedly, and if the Ravens got a call from any of the Wellness Centers, anyone an angry boyfriend and any anything to say, whoa, whoa, you know this is going on or did that? We have no so here’s,
Julie Scharper 32:17
here’s what we know. We know that two spas told us that they banned him, and they and he was informed of the ban. We know that other spa owners or managers were aware of this, and it was sort of a case of like, Oh, don’t put him on Jane DOE’s book. She said she’s had some bad experiences with him. Oh, and don’t put him on Mary DOE’s book either. Don’t put him on Susie DOE’s book, because, you know, these people have said that they had a problem with him. We know in some cases, the women felt too intimidated to tell a boss or supervisor and owner in as you said, at the amazing
Nestor Aparicio 33:02
statement that somebody could come in and make them feel that way, and they they could not even tell their ball, and that that just goes without saying, because I don’t think anybody else they would with any Joe citizen in any of these places. I keep thinking to myself, if I tried Hanky Panky, I would literally, out loud, be afraid to get my ass kicked and thrown out the front door and having police waiting for me when I walk out, put my clothes on to walk out like literally, I can’t fathom that there’s not more restraint for this. I’m just saying that out loud on behalf of anyone that’s ever worked on my body, or yours, or anyone else’s Sure. So,
Julie Scharper 33:38
I mean, you know, the spa owners were and managers in you know, many cases kind of had stars in their eyes that they felt flattered that he was patronizing their businesses. You know, that’s what the massage therapist told us. They said they were afraid to go to higher ups. In some cases, some of them did, others didn’t. But in those who were afraid to go to their hires up felt like they didn’t know if they would be believed. And I also want to make another important point here, which is that in Tucker’s attorneys response to us. They they said they asked us to contact other massage therapists who had had good experiences with him, and we did that. We reached out to, I believe everyone on the list, this was Brenna and Justin, were focused more on this. So I’m not entirely sure if we got every single one, but I know we made an attempt to reach every single one on that list. And, you know, and we talked, they talked to several massage therapists who said, Oh, we never had a problem with him at all. He was always a perfect gentleman. I don’t know where this is coming from. There was an interesting side note there, which is. That in this list that the Tuckers folks gave us, some of them were massage therapists at the Ravens facility, and they were only identified by their first names. And so, of course, we reached out to the ravens and said, hey, you know, Tucker’s folks gave us the names of these people who are massage therapists who worked at him at the Ravens facility, we only know their first names, so we can’t just, you know, go find them on LinkedIn or social media. Can you help us? Can you facilitate these interviews? The Raven said, No, which we don’t know. Again, what that means, if that means anything, it was just sort of intriguing that there was a bit of a disconnect there.
Nestor Aparicio 35:49
I have to wrap things up with you because of a time. And I would love to have Justin on. I’d love to have Brent on. I live here. I care. You know, I I know Justin Tucker a little bit. I’m not done with this. And I keep saying out loud, if the NFL wants to invest call me. I’ll tell you everything I know about everything I know, because there’s plenty to know above and beyond. You know, going back to Ray Rice and what the team says, and the team hasn’t said a whole lot. Last question for you, and this is interesting for me, from a journalist standpoint, all these leads, all these people, all this inbound, all this outbound. Did anybody reach to you when you talk to them and thought this is fishy. I don’t believe this person.
Julie Scharper 36:27
No, and I was, I was really on alert for that when, especially as people were coming to us, as opposed to the people that we were chasing down. But there were a few details that we did not publish in the first two stories, and even some things that we didn’t put in the third story. But when people would mention these details to me in that third round of massage therapists, it was, like, Ah, interesting, like you are saying these things. Like, for example, many massage therapists said that he kept his eyes open for the duration of the massage, which is someone who gets massages. You know, it’s kind of unusual, kind of
Nestor Aparicio 37:16
impossible, but okay, I mean, I you know, some of this stuff is just unthinkable to me as a guy who’s had 1000 massages, but go ahead
Julie Scharper 37:23
and that he made eye contact with them, especially when he was doing things that they described as inappropriate, you know. So, so hearing those details, I was like, Ah, you didn’t hear this from this. You didn’t get this from the first story or the second story. And again, you know, we just continue to do our due diligence and to corroborate those stories, and check the the state licensing, check their employment history, and talk to multiple people who said, Oh yeah, I remember she told me about this back in the day. You know one woman who contacted us, or you know she’d actually contacted the attorney Belsky. You know, she shared with me that when the first story came out, she got this flood of text messages from friends saying, Oh, my God, you’re not the only one. Look, all these other people are saying that this happened to them as well. And she actually shared screenshots of those text messages with me that was pretty convincing that, you know, old friends of hers, you know, were so well versed in her account that when they saw this story published, they texted her to say, you’re not the only one. Well,
Nestor Aparicio 38:42
I keep up the great work, you know, I it’s, it’s unfolding, and I will say what Eric tacos said, it’s serious and concerning. All of it is serious and concerning, just the power play and the shield and what you can get away with, even after Ray Rice and what the team did. And I just and, and the defense of all of it to be the blame the journalist, that that’s what set me off in the beginning, is dirty and up. Good journalist, hard working journalist. And we’ve just spent 45 minutes discussing what took you, you know, well over 45 hours of work, over, you know, hundreds of hours of work and and hard work and difficult work. So I commend you as a recovering journalist, myself a former journalist, as the Ravens. Raven, call me a former journalist. I have to at least say that, but I am appreciative for all that you guys are doing. And I would tell people support the Baltimore banner. You know, pay. You have to pay for good journalism. You guys, as you’ve pointed out, you you got kids, you got a family, you got a phone. It’s the weekend the phone’s going off. I know how hard your work is, and I respect the heck out
Julie Scharper 39:47
of you. Thank you, Nestor. I appreciate it. Thanks for having me on. Joey sharper,
Nestor Aparicio 39:51
a reporter extraordinaire of the Baltimore banner. You can see her work along with Brenna and Justin and all the stuff and unfolding and you know, we’re. Got our own tech service around here. I’m always like, I got to be checking because I feel like more news is going to drop. Because I this. You, you still are working on this story, right? This is going to be more things happening, right? This thing’s not over with, because people are wondering, Where’s the end of all this in the NFL investigation? I’d say, stay tuned. It’s just a sad, unfortunate off season right now for the ravens, we’ll continue to talk about it out loud as best we can. And, you know, try to separate fact from fiction. That’s what we try to do around here on Nestor. We are W, N, S, D, A of 5070, Towson, Baltimore. We never stop talking Baltimore positive football and baseball and stuff. You.
