Will Trevor Bauer take the stand? Judge to consider it, but it might not matter

Warning: This story contains descriptions of violence.

LOS ANGELES – Los Angeles Dodgers pitcher Trevor Bauer has been sitting in a wood-paneled courtroom here every day since Monday, quietly listening to more than nine hours of live testimony from a woman who said he punched her face and vagina during a sexual encounter at his home in May.

He comes dressed in a suit. He’s guarded by bailiffs. He is even accompanied by an entourage of sorts, including his two baseball agents and parents.

But he hasn’t yet said a word in the proceedings.

Will he on Thursday?

That’s a question set to be decided by Superior Court Judge Dianna Gould-Saltman, near the conclusion of this week’s hearing about whether a restraining order should remain in force against Bauer.

“We have one more witness left … Mr. Bauer himself,” said Marc Garelick, an attorney for the woman who has accused Bauer of assault. Garelick said Wednesday that the woman’s legal team wanted to call Bauer to the witness stand Thursday morning, drawing a response from Bauer’s attorney, Shawn Holley.

“I would like to restate what I indicated previously, which is that Mr. Bauer is going to take the Fifth Amendment,” Holley said at the end of Wednesday’s hearing.

Holley has advised Bauer to invoke his Fifth Amendment right not to testify against himself because there is a pending Pasadena police investigation into the matter. Even if he does take the witness stand, Holley told the judge Wednesday that Bauer won’t say anything “beyond his name and what he does for a living.”

So it might not matter much if the judge decides to make him get on the witness stand or not. Either way, it adds more drama to the proceedings here before they close.

Wednesday was Day 3 of a civil hearing that will help the judge decide whether to dissolve the restraining order against Bauer or extend it up to five years. The accuser testified this week Bauer choked her unconscious during two sexual encounters at his home in Pasadena – the one in May and a previous one in April.

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She said she sought the temporary restraining order in June because she feared what Bauer might do after he learned she went to the hospital with injuries from that second sexual encounter, including scratches on her face and bruises on her buttocks.

Paste BN does not identify individuals who allege sexual crimes without their permission.

Bauer has not been arrested or charged. His representatives have said his relations with the accuser were consensual and that she is motivated to gain a monetary settlement. They cited text messages between the two that show she was asking for rough sex, including being choked out.

After signing a three-year, $102 million contract with the Dodgers in February, Bauer has been on paid leave since July 2 as Pasadena police and Major League Baseball investigate the matter.

Wednesday’s hearing featured three witnesses: the accuser, her best friend and a medical expert hired by Bauer’s legal team, who cast doubt on the accuser’s explanation for how her injuries were inflicted.

The day began with Holley continuing her cross-examination of the accuser, often combing through threads of text messages from around the times of the encounters. In one, Holley noted the accuser wrote her Alcoholic Anonymous sponsor, “Give me 50 million dollars and don’t slap my (vagina) and id be great.”

This was after the woman said Bauer choked her unconscious during their first sexual encounter in April and before her second encounter in May.

“It would all be OK if he gave you $50 million, right?” Holley asked. “That’s the implication here.”

“Not necessarily,” the woman replied.

Under questioning from her own attorney, Doreen Olson, the woman explained why she got upset by a statement from Bauer’s legal team that her relations with Bauer were consensual and that she asked for rough sex, according to her text messages.

“Text messages don’t mean consent,” the accuser said. “And I did not consent to bruises all over my body, to be put in a hospital, and having things done to me while I was unconscious. It’s not consensual.”

In the afternoon, the woman’s best friend testified about how the accuser acted and looked after the two encounters. After the first encounter in April, the friend said the accuser told her she had been choked unconscious with her hair, had Bauer’s fingers forced down her throat and “didn’t like it.”

But when asked by Garelick about the accuser’s demeanor after that encounter, the friend said the woman had been “excited to hang out with him the first time.”

That drew a bit of a reaction among the Bauer team.

After the second encounter with Bauer in May, the friend said the accuser “was very shaken up” with two black eyes, scratches on her face, bruises behind her ears and on her vagina. The accuser “could barely talk,” the friend said.  

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