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Trevor Bauer

Trevor Bauer has sued the woman who accused him of assaulting her

Los Angeles Dodgers pitcher Trevor Bauer has filed another defamation lawsuit, this time against the woman who accused him of assaulting her last year during two sexual encounters at his home in Pasadena.

The lawsuit names the woman and her attorney, Fred Thiagarajah, as defendants and accuses them of defaming him by making false statements about what happened between Bauer and the woman last year. It says that because of the woman’s “wrongful acts,” the contractual relationship between Bauer and the Dodgers was disrupted, causing him to lose opportunities to earn additional income.

The lawsuit seeks general and punitive damages in amounts to be established at trial. It is the third defamation suit Bauer has filed after his baseball career grinded to a halt last June, when the woman accused him of choking her unconscious and hitting her.

He has not played since being put on paid administrative July 2 and could be suspended soon by Major League Baseball.

“After their first sexual encounter, (the woman) continued to pursue Mr. Bauer so she could have rough sex with him again, but this time, she told Mr. Bauer she wanted a rougher sexual experience,” said Bauer’s lawsuit, which was filed Monday in U.S. District Court in California. “Unbeknownst to Mr. Bauer, who believed (the woman) was just expressing her sexual preferences, (the woman's) goal was to lure Mr. Bauer into having a rougher sexual experience so she could later claim this sexual experience was not what she requested and thereby lay the groundwork for a financial settlement.”

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Trevor Bauer last made a pitching appearance for the Dodgers on June 28, 2021.

Bauer has said his encounters with the woman were consensual rough sex. The woman said the encounters began as consensual but went too far. She said he hit her and choked her, including hitting her on the butt when she was unconscious.

Bauer was never arrested or charged. In August, a judge in Los Angeles denied the woman’s request for a five-year restraining order, noting that the woman’s initial request for a temporary restraining order was “materially misleading.”

The woman went to the hospital after the second encounter with Bauer and was diagnosed with an acute head injury and assault by strangulation.

Thiagarajah didn’t immediately return a message seeking comment. The suit takes issue with comments he made to the Washington Post after the Los Angeles County District Attorney declined to charge Bauer with a crime, citing a lack of evidence.  Thiagarajah said there was “no doubt that Mr. Bauer just brutalized” the woman and that “the evidence is overwhelming that these things occurred. . . . That was established to 100 percent certainty.”

“At the time that Mr. Thiagarajah made these statements, he knew that his client had submitted a `materially misleading’ Petition to the California Superior Court in order to obtain a restraining order,” Bauer’s suit states. “He knew that his client had concealed (and deleted) material information which revealed Ms. Hill’s true motivations in filing the (restraining order) Petition — to gain publicity and money and to harm Mr. Bauer.”

Bauer also has sued The Athletic and the parent company of Deadspin, accusing them of publishing false information about the nature of the woman’s injuries.

The judge in August noted the photos of the woman’s injuries after the second encounter were “terrible.”

“Under most circumstances, merely seeing photographs such as those would serve as a per se condemnation of the perpetrator of such injuries,” Judge Dianna Gould-Saltman wrote. “But (the woman) had and has the right to engage in any kind of sex as a consenting adult that she wants to with another consenting adult.”

Follow reporter Brent Schrotenboer on Twitter @Schrotenboer. E-mail: bschrotenb@usatoday.com.

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