Los Angeles Dodgers pitcher Trevor Bauer filed a lawsuit Monday against the San Diego woman, alleging sexual assault, defamation and tortious interference while seeking unspecified monetary and punitive damages.
In the lawsuit, which was filed in U.S. District Court for the Central District of California, Bauer’s attorneys say the woman “made up allegations of sexual assault,” “is pursuing false criminal and civil claims,” ”made false and malicious testimony,” and “Generated a media blitz based on their lies” to “destroy” Bauer’s reputation, “attract attention” and “extract millions of dollars.”
In a June 29, 2021 petition to obtain a domestic violence restraining order (DVRO), the woman — who ESPN declined to name — stated that Bauer took consensual rough sex too far in two encounters in his Pasadena. California, at home in April and May 2021, and claimed he choked her unconscious multiple times, sodomized her without consent, and punched her all over the body, leaving her with injuries that required medical attention.
Bauer and his lawyers have firmly denied the allegations, calling them “fraudulent” and “baseless.”
The woman was denied a permanent restraining order after a four-day hearing in August, and six months later, in February 2022, the LA County Attorney’s Office decided not to pursue criminal charges against Bauer. But Major League Baseball, which has autonomy to suspend players for “just causes” under its domestic violence policy, is still investigating Bauer, whose administrative leave was recently extended through Friday.
In the lawsuit, Bauer’s attorneys deny that he had anal sex with the woman, punched her in the face, stomach or vagina, or scratched her cheek or back, the woman said.
“During both sexual encounters,” the suit reads, “at all times, Mr. Bauer respected the established and agreed-upon boundaries.” [the woman].”
The lawsuit states that the woman, who was 27 at the time, continued to stalk Bauer after the initial encounter with the aim of luring him into “a rougher sexual experience so that she could later claim that sexual experience was not what what she asked for, laying the groundwork for a financial settlement.”
The lawsuit also relates to text messages the woman sent to friends in which she appeared to brag about a possible payout, while her testimony during the DVRO hearing noted conflicting statements in which she said images of her injuries had changed and claimed she “deliberately” deleted the phone records during the process.
The woman, who provided photos and medical records as part of her DVRO statement, said she woke up the morning after the second sexual encounter with two black eyes, a swollen jaw and cheekbones, dark red scratches on the right side of her face and bruises gums, a bump on the side of her head, a split upper lip, black bruises over the top of her vagina, and multiple bruises on her right butt cheek. The woman consented to being choked unconscious.
The lawsuit says the woman instigated rough sex, citing a text message sent between their first and second encounters. In the text message, which became a central part of the August hearing, the woman urged Bauer to “give all the pain.”
The suit also says the woman had “no visible markings or bruises on her face or body other than a slightly swollen lip” when she left Bauer’s home after the second encounter on May 16.
The lawsuit also charges one of the woman’s attorneys, Fred Thiagarajah, with defamation after he told the Washington Post after the district attorney’s denial that Bauer had “just brutalized” the woman and that her alleged behavior was labeled “100- percentage certainty” had been established.
Over the past two months, as MLB continued its investigation, Bauer’s attorneys filed defamation lawsuits against two media outlets, saying that Deadspin knowingly published false information in its coverage of the sexual assault allegations and that The Athletic was “running a campaign to maliciously Target tracking and harassment” led “Bäuer.
Bauer’s attorneys also subpoenaed the Pasadena Police Department for missing phone records of the San Diego woman, writing in a court filing that “the requested materials will further reveal plaintiff’s plan to ruin defendant’s reputation and career and cause a major… to earn a paycheck by providing false and misleading allegations in their petition.”
But during an April 4 hearing, LA County Superior Court Judge Dianna Gould-Saltman — who lifted the restraining order against Bauer in August — ruled that the pitcher would not be privy to the woman’s phone records, stating that his Attorneys did not make the proper motion and that the judge would nevertheless have been skeptical of an argument that the records would help them show that the woman misled the court proceedings and must pay his attorneys’ fees.