PHOENIX — Former major league pitcher Trevor Bauer is facing a fourth sexual assault allegation after an Arizona woman filed a lawsuit. Bauer is countersuing the woman for fraud.
The woman alleged in the lawsuit that Bauer, 32, held a knife to her throat and choked her until she lost consciousness during an alleged rape that left her pregnant three years ago, The Associated Press reported.
In an amended complaint filed on Tuesday, the woman claimed she had an “unplanned pregnancy” after Bauer “violently sexually assaulted” her in December 2020, according to ESPN. In court filings, Bauer’s attorneys called the situation as “a single sexual encounter” that “was consensual.”
The woman’s original complaint was filed on Dec. 20, 2022, according to the AP.
According to the woman’s amended lawsuit, filed in Maricopa County Superior Court, she and Bauer had a relationship in late 2020, the Los Angeles Times reported. The lawsuit described several incidents in which Bauer is accused of choking her and forcibly grabbing her, according to the newspaper.
In another encounter, she accused Bauer of holding a jagged steak knife to her throat at his Arizona home in Scottsdale. She also accused him of raping her at an Arizona residence, according to the Times.
The woman is seeking $3.7 million in her lawsuit, along with an “apology to any women the defendant has sexually humiliated and abused against their consent,” according to USA Today.
“Trevor Bauer categorically denies this woman’s unhinged allegations,” Bauer’s player’s co-agents, Jon Fetterolf and Rachel Luba, said in a statement Wednesday.
Bauer’s countersuit alleges that he and the woman had a “single, consensual sexual encounter” in December 2020, when his condom broke while having sex, the Times reported. Bauer added that after the encounter, the woman claimed she was pregnant and demanded $1.6 million from him to terminate the pregnancy.
Bauer’s two-year suspension from Major League Baseball was reduced to 194 games in December 2022 by an arbitration panel.
He went on to play professionally in Japan after his original suspension, USA Today reported. He was released by the Los Angeles Dodgers in January 2023 and then was unsigned by other MLB teams, according to the newspaper.
Bauer was suspended for 324 games (two seasons) in April and was serving the longest penalty ever issued for violation of MLB’s policy on sexual assault and domestic violence, the Times reported.
On Feb. 11, 2021, the Dodgers signed Bauer, the 2020 National League Cy Young Award winner, to a three-year, $102 million contract through the 2023 season, the Times reported.
Of the 16 players suspended since MLB’s sexual assault and domestic violence policy took effect in 2015, Bauer has been the only player to appeal, according to the newspaper.
Bauer was first publicly accused of sexual assault in June 2021 by a San Diego woman, the Times reported. He denied the claims and faced no criminal charges. He spent the rest of the 2021 season and the beginning of the 2022 campaign on administrative leave.
He was suspended in April 2022.
When Bauer was released by the Dodgers, two other women in Ohio accused him of sexual assault, The Washington Post reported. Bauer denied their allegations.