Judge rejects restraining order for Bauer
Rules Dodger honoured women’s boundaries in violent sexual encounters
LOS ANGELES—A Los Angeles judge sided with Dodgers pitcher Trevor Bauer on Thursday and denied a five-year 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 Gould-Saltman said that, according to the 27-year-old San Diego woman’s testimony, Bauer honoured 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, Calif., and a probe by Major League Baseball.
MLB put Bauer on paid administrative leave on July 2, and has extended the status through Aug. 27.
The judge cited the criminal investigation earlier Thursday in allowing Bauer to remain off the witness stand at the hearing, after the woman’s attorneys called him to testify.
Bauer said “yes, your honour” when Gould-Saltman asked if he intended to follow his lawyer’s advice and invoke his Fifth Amendment right to avoid selfincrimination. That was the only time he spoke during the four-day hearing.
The woman took the stand for three days of dramatic and emotional testimony, crying frequently as she recounted how her excitement and emotional connection with Bauer turned into pain, confusion and fear after the two meetings in April and May.
“I felt like my soul left my body, and I was terrified,” she said. “I couldn’t fight back.”