Woman says she feared Trevor Bauer

LOS ANGELES — A woman seeking a five-year restraining order against Trevor Bauer testified Tuesday that her horror grew as bruises emerged and her pain surged the day after a sexual encounter in which she said the Los Angeles Dodgers pitcher choked her into unconsciousness and punched her repeatedly.

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 under a second day of questioning from her attorney in Los Angeles Superior Court. “I wanted him to know what he’d done to me.”

Bauer, who has said through representatives that everything that happened between the two was wholly consensual, 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 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 police, who are still investigating three months later.

Bauer’s attorney Shawn Holley began cross-examining the woman late Tuesday morning and was likely to continue for the rest of the day at the hearing that is expected to last most of the week and is scheduled to include testimony from Bauer.

Holley suggested with her early questions that the woman’s declaration seeking the order contained many lies of omission.

Holley said during her opening statement Monday that the woman gave Bauer every indication she consented to the treatment she received during the two nights they spent together in April and May at the pitcher’s home in Pasadena.

Bauer, 30, was placed on paid administrative leave on July 2 by Major League Baseball, and the status has been extended through Friday. MLB says it is conducting its own investigation and Bauer could face punishment under baseball’s domestic violence policy.

On Monday, the woman talked about beginning to exchange messages with Bauer when she tagged him in an Instagram post while he was pitching against her hometown Padres in April, and described the two visits she made to his home in Pasadena. Both included sex that began as consensual but grew violent well beyond her comfort, she said.

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.

And she said 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.