Trevor Bauer sues domestic abuse accuser, attorney

Trevor Bauer has filed another lawsuit related to accusations of domestic abuse from last year.

On Monday, Bauer filed a suit in the United States District Court for the Central District of California Southern Division against his accuser and her attorney, Niranjan Fred Thiagarajah, alleging defamation and tortious interference.

Bauer, a 31-year-old pitcher for the Los Angeles Dodgers, has previously filed defamation suits against Deadspin, The Athletic and former Athletic writer Molly Knight related to the same case.

“[The accuser] fabricated allegations of sexual assault against Plaintiff Trevor Bauer, pursued bogus criminal and civil actions against him, made false and malicious statements about him, and generated a media blitz based on her lies,” the lawsuit states.

“[The accuser’s] motives for making her false claims and statements are now clear. She wanted to destroy Mr. Bauer’s reputation and baseball career, garner attention
for herself, and extract millions of dollars from Mr. Bauer. [The accuser] was aided in those efforts by her attorney, Defendant Niranjan Fred Thiagarajah. Although a Los Angeles Superior Court Judge rejected [the accuser’s] false allegations and the District Attorney for Los Angeles County found them unworthy of criminal charges, the damage to Mr. Bauer has been extreme.”

In February, the Los Angeles District Attorney’s office announced that it would not be pressing charges over the sexual assault allegations the former Cy Young winner faced last year. Before that, a judge in the California Superior Court denied the accuser’s request for a restraining order.

Bauer was accused of punching and choking a woman unconscious during sex. The pitcher admitted to having rough sex with the accuser, but said it was consensual. During the case, Bauer’s attorney claimed the pitcher had text messages from the accuser “involving requests to be ‘choked out’ and slapped in the face” and that “the woman spent the night, and left without incident, continuing to message Mr. Bauer with friendly and flirtatious banter.”

MLB and the MLBPA agreed to place Bauer on paid administrative leave in late June. They have continued to extend it week-by-week during this season.

“After their first sexual encounter, [the accuser] 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,” the suit continues. “Unbeknownst to Mr. Bauer, who believed [the accuser] was just expressing her sexual preferences, [the accuser’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.

“To implement her plan, [the accuser] unequivocally told Mr. Bauer that she was interested in engaging in even rougher sex on a second occasion, communicating in explicit detail the sexual experience she desired. During their second sexual encounter, the two again engaged in consensual rough sex that involved the rough sexual acts that [the accuser] requested.”

The suit claims the accuser filed a false police report in which she claimed Bauer of “sexually assaulted her during their second sexual encounter by choking her unconscious on two occasions, punching her in the face and vagina repeatedly and scratching her face.”

He denies choking her without her consent, and denies having punched her in the face or vagina or scratching her “in any way.”

The lawsuit also alleges that the accuser failed to preserve electronic communication, saying that she “deliberately deleted scores of text messages, videos, and photographs from her phone, including text messages with her two closest confidants immediately following her second sexual encounter with Mr. Bauer.”

Bauer is being represented in the suit Blair Brown and Jon Fetterolf of Zuckerman Spaeder LLP and Shawn Holley and Kate Mangels of Kinsella Weitzman Iser Kump Holley LLP.

Niranjan Fred Thiagarajah, the accuser’s attorney named in the suit, has not responded to request for comment at the time of publishing.