Judge denies restraining order against Bauer

LOS ANGELES >> A Los Angeles judge sided with Dodgers pitcher Trevor Bauer on Aug. 19 and denied a fiveyear restraining order requested by a woman who said he choked her into unconsciousness and punched her repeatedly during two sexual encounters.

In denying the civil domestic violence restraining order after a four-day hearing, Judge Dianna GouldSaltman said that according to the 27-year-old San Diego woman’s testimony, Bauer honored her boundaries when she set them. And she said Bauer couldn’t know the boundaries she didn’t express to him.

“We consider in a sexual encounter that when a woman says no she should be believed,” Gould-Saltman said, “so what should we do when she says yes?”

The woman’s attorney, Lisa Helfend Meyer, said in her closing arguments that Bauer was a “monster” who far exceeded what the woman consented to, especially in punching her in the face and vagina and leaving serious bruising that was captured in photographs. Bauer also did things that the woman couldn’t consent to because she had been choked unconscious, including, according to her testimony, having anal sex with her while she was out, Meyer said.

“Let me be clear, the injuries as shown in the photographs are terrible,” said the judge, who issued her decision about five minutes after closing arguments were completed. However, she added, in her communications with Bauer the woman “was not ambiguous about wanting rough sex in the parties’ first encounter, and wanting rougher sex in the

second encounter.”

Bauer had no visible reaction in court to the decision.

“We are grateful to the Los Angeles Superior Court for denying this request,” his lawyer Shawn Holley said outside the courthouse as he stood silently at her side. “We had expected this outcome since the petition was filed in June.”

It was a victory for Bauer in his public fight to clear his name, but serious hurdles

remain, including a criminal investigation by police in Pasadena, California, and a probe by Major League Baseball.

“Allegations made against Trevor Bauer continue to be investigated by MLB’s Department of Investigations (DOI) under our Joint Domestic Violence, Sexual Assault and Child Abuse Policy,” the league said in a statement after the decision.