On the same day Trevor Bauer was handed an unprecedented two-season suspension without pay Friday by Major League Baseball for violating the league’s domestic violence and sexual assault policy, another woman, in an interview with the Washington Post, accused the Los Angeles Dodgers pitcher of choking her unconscious without her consent dozens of times during their years-long sexual relationship.
She is the third known woman to accuse Bauer of sexual assault, and spoke with MLB as part of its investigation into Bauer’s conduct before the league issued its discipline. Bauer has vowed to challenge the suspension before Martin Scheinman, baseball’s independent arbitrator, who is faced with deciding whether commissioner Rob Manfred had “just cause” for the discipline under the domestic violence policy agreed to in 2015.
The woman, from Columbus, Ohio, said she is willing to testify in the arbitration hearing, the Post reported.
The woman said she met Bauer on a dating app in 2013, when he was pitching for Cleveland’s minor league team, the Columbus Clippers. She told the Post that Bauer began choking her unconscious during sex without them discussing it first, later telling him that she was OK with being choked “to a certain point” — before she passed out.
During one encounter in January 2014, when they were in a Cleveland hotel after the team’s fan festival, the woman told the Post she passed out with Bauer’s hands around her neck, only to be awoken by Bauer saying she had been convulsing on the hotel room bed. The woman said Bauer was apologetic for violating their established boundary, but that as their relationship continued over the years, he would frequently disregard her warnings and choke her to the point of unconsciousness.
The woman told the Post that Bauer would only let go of her neck if she “got pissed and was like desperate about it,” or if she passed out, which happened dozens of times, she said. The woman said Bauer also slapped her without her consent and anally penetrated her while she was unconscious.
The woman said she had little correspondence with Bauer following an argument they had over text message in 2019, and that she never saw him in person again after that argument.
Bauer declined to be interviewed for the Post’s story. In a statement to the newspaper, Bauer’s representatives did not deny he had a relationship with the Columbus woman, but said he “unequivocally denies” her “false and defamatory” allegations.
“Any neutral reader of the scores of text messages, compromising photos and sexually explicit videos this woman sent of herself to Mr. Bauer over the last three years demanding the very sex acts that she now claims were problematic — without any prior complaint — would strongly question the veracity of her allegations,” the statement read.
Bauer later tweeted a full statement that said in part, “The incidents she detailed to the Washington Post — and specifically the one that involved non-consensual choking in which she claims to have convulsed and woken up on a hotel floor — absolutely never occurred, in any capacity. Additionally, at no point during sex or otherwise did I ever hit her.”
The Columbus woman said she felt compelled to share her story after Bauer denied similar allegations made by two other women — one of whom was also based in Ohio and, according to a Washington Post report in August 2021, sought a temporary order of protection against Bauer in June 2020 — and accused them of lying for potential financial gain.
The Columbus woman said she followed the four-day restraining order hearing held last August in Los Angeles, during which a then-27-year-old San Diego woman testified that Bauer took consensual rough sex too far over the course of two encounters last April and May, including choking her unconscious.
According the Post, shortly after the conclusion of that hearing — when a judge ruled to dissolve the temporary restraining order against Bauer — the Columbus woman had a phone conversation with MLB attorneys during which she shared her allegations against Bauer.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.