Los Angeles Dodgers pitcher Trevor Bauer won’t face criminal charges over sexual assault allegations

Los Angeles Dodgers pitcher Trevor Bauer will not face criminal charges for sexual assault allegations, the LA County District Attorney’s Office said Tuesday. 

According to the charge evaluation sheet accessed by CNN, Deputy District Attorney Fernanda Barreto wrote, “After a thorough review of all the available including the civil restraining order proceedings, witness statements and the physical evidence, the People are unable to prove the relevant charges beyond a reasonable doubt.”

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Bauer was accused by a San Diego woman of physical and sexual assault on two separate occasions last year, a charge that has kept him from playing baseball for several months. She had sought a restraining order against him in June last year, following which he was put on paid administrative leave. 

The 31-year-old All-star pitcher has denied the accusations since the beginning. 

Soon after the ruling, the player posted a seven-minute video on YouTube titled ‘The Truth’, in which he reiterated that his sexual encounters with the woman had been consensual. “In August, the Los Angeles Superior Court reviewed a host of information and testimony, and after a four-day hearing denied a request for a permanent restraining order against me, as the Court correctly found that there was no basis for this request. More importantly, in doing so, the Court also found that no sexual assault, act of abuse, or non-consensual sex occurred between me and the woman seeking the restraining order,” he said. 

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Last year, Judge Dianna Gould-Saltman of the Superior Court of Los Angeles County had denied the 27-year-old San Diego woman’s request for a restraining order against Bauer. In denying the civil domestic violence restraining order after a four-day hearing, Gould-Saltman said that according to the woman’s testimony, Bauer honoured her boundaries when she set them. And she said Bauer couldn’t know the boundaries she didn’t express to him.

Despite the LA county’s decision to not charge him, his future in Major League Baseball (MLB) remains uncertain. The MLB said in a statement that its internal investigation is “ongoing, and we will comment further at the appropriate time.”

Dodgers officials said the organization would not comment until the MLB investigation is concluded, according to a CNN report.