LOS ANGELES – An attorney for Trevor Bauer asked a woman Tuesday why she left out “dozens of key facts” in her petition for a five-year restraining order against the Los Angeles Dodgers pitcher.
“I don't know,” answered the woman, who testified that Bauer choked her until she was unconscious and punched her repeatedly in two sexual encounters.
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The exchange during lawyer Shawn Holley's cross-examination of the woman came in her second day of testimony at the hearing in Los Angeles Superior Court.
Holley challenged the 27-year-old San Diego woman on why she omitted a text message to Bauer before their meetings saying she would have her “feelings turned off” and joking that she would have a nondisclosure agreement “signed and sealed” when she came to see him.
The woman said she no longer had access to those texts.
Holley asked why she got back into bed and slept next to Bauer after the traumatic experience she testified that she had. The woman said she wanted to remember the hours of emotional connection the two had experienced beforehand.
“I didn’t want to think about what just happened," the woman said. “I wanted to go back to the way it was before we had sex."
The hearing is expected to continue Wednesday and Thursday, and to include testimony from Bauer, 30, who was placed on paid administrative leave on July 2 by Major League Baseball. The leave has been extended through Friday. MLB says it is conducting its own investigation and Bauer could face punishment under baseball’s domestic violence policy.
Holley said during her opening statement that the woman gave Bauer every indication she consented to the treatment she received during the nights they spent together at his home in Pasadena.
Under questioning from her own attorney, the woman testified that her horror grew as bruises emerged and her pain surged the day after the second time she saw Bauer, in May.
The 27-year-old said she sent Bauer a picture of herself after returning home to San Diego.
“I could not believe what my face looked like,” she said. “I wanted him to know what he'd done to me.”
Bauer replied in a text message, “damn girl, are you OK?”
The woman said she was just as frightened of the social consequences as the physical ones, and was at first determined to tell no one else.
“I knew how that was going to go,” she testified. “That situation paints me as the slut. I didn't want the story to go anywhere.”
But a visit with her best friend, who was "mortified' by how she looked, convinced her to seek medical help. She would end up in a hospital emergency room, she said, which led to visits from a social worker, her parents and Pasadena police, who are still investigating three months later.
On Tuesday, she discussed the aftermath of the second visit, in which according to her testimony Bauer had punched her in the face and vagina, and left bruises on her gums, around her eyes and behind her ears.
She said she was frightened at what Bauer might have done to her while she was unconscious. In text messages and a phone call she made to him for Pasadena police to record, he said that he only punched her in the buttocks during that time.
She described an hours-long sexual assault exam that she said was terribly traumatic and physically painful.
The nurse who conducted the examination took the stand and testified Tuesday that she had never seen the kind of bruising she documented on and around the woman's vagina in the approximately 75 similar exams that she had done.
Nurse Kelly Valencia said, “it was frankly alarming,” but did not think it required further treatment.
The woman testified that she received daily messages from Bauer, expressing his concern.
“Here for you if you want to talk,” one read.
“I feel so bad that this happened,” another said.
He offered to send her groceries while she was recovering at home, or otherwise help.
The woman said she appreciated his acknowledgement at first.
“It felt good to hear that he felt bad,” she said.
But she found the messages increasingly disconcerting, and she worried that he knew she had talked to police.
“I felt like he was saying these things so I would shut up,” she testified.
The Associated Press does not typically identify people who say they have been victims of sexual assault.
Bauer agreed to a $102 million, three-year contract to join his hometown Dodgers earlier this year after winning his first Cy Young with the Cincinnati Reds last season.
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