Texas Family Is Suing DirecTV For Sending A Pervert To Their Home

A family in Murphy, Texas, is suing DirecTV after they allege that a man sent to their home for a service call in 2012 was a registered sex offender who took photos of their 12-year-old gymnast daughter doing stretches. Ugh. DirecTV claims that the man, Wahren Scott Massey, was not a employee of the company, and had just come along for the call with a subcontracted installer. The way I see it, it doesn’t matter. They need to be responsible for who goes on calls in their name.

According to attorney Rob Crain, who is representing the family:

“This is a public safety concern. This is a danger no one wants coming into their home,”

Sounds reasonable to me to treat this as a public safety concern. People trust that when a company they do business with is sending someone into their home, that person has been fully vetted and isn’t, ya know, a convicted pervert.

When the 12-year-old told her parents that she witnessed Massey photographing her, her father called the police, who then questioned him and ran a background check, revealing his sex offender status. He was charged with criminal trespass and eventually pleaded guilty to attempted indecency with a child and attempted sexual performance of a child. Thankfully, due to his record, this was enough to send him to prison for four years.

I can already hear the angry Internet comments crying “Everyone is too sue-happy,” so let me stress that this family went out of their way to get DirecTV to simply explain how this could have happened. According to a statement released through Crain:

“We sent a certified letter that we know was received, tried to get through on the phone system, sent multiple e-mails that were received. We sent letters directly to legal counsel for DirecTV. We’ve contacted lawyers we know did work for DirecTV thinking they could get in, but to no avail,” Crain said. “So, we filed this on the eve of the statute of limitations. This is not what they wanted to do. But we decided, as a family, we were not going to leave this public safety concern alone.”

In the end, it was news channel WFAA 8 that finally got an actual response out of DirecTV and it’s as evasive as you might imagine:

“The information you have is incorrect. The subject you are speaking of has no affiliation with DirecTV whatsoever. The actual installer was a MasTec [MasTec Advanced Technologies] contractor who, in violation of company policy, brought the subject with him. The relationship between MasTec and the contractor was terminated. DirecTV installation contractors and sub-contractors are required to complete a background check before being allowed to perform any installation services.”

First of all, while Massey wasn’t an actual employee, the police report from the incident clearly states that both he and his partner “both stated they were independent contractors/installers” for DirecTV. Secondly and most importantly, why was this so difficult to convey to the family involved of their lawyers? Why did it take media heat to finally get their heads out of their asses? I’m guessing that they wanted to distance themselves from this as much as possible, and were hoping it would just go away.Seems they could have saved themselves a lawsuit by opening up about how they planned to stop this from happening again.

Had DirecTV actually tried to work with this family instead of stonewalling them for two years, I would most likely be inclined to say a lawsuit was unnecessary. Hell, I think the family would agree. But since it seems they did everything they could to reach out to this company, only to receive silence, I think they are well within their rights and I hope they win. It doesn’t mention any action taken against the subcontractor, but I hope they sue them too. This should never happen to anyone again.

(Photo: 360b/Shutterstock)