Yes, and it appears the judge is doing his job to prevent sensationlistic claims and inflamitory words from causing a weak juror or two to rely on emotion, instead of facts.
The guy is up on charges of sexual assault.
You can't get more sensational than that.
The plaintiff should be free to give their interpretation of the events and the defendant should be free to give his.
In the United States, a juror or two cannot convict. Twelve can.
So someone rapes your wife.
On the witness stand, she has to say “He jumped out of the bushes and we had intercourse without my permission”
The way these tyrant judges work, the jury will never know why the woman didn’t use the word rape. If the victim doesn’t call it rape, the jury won’t either. This is how you get juries, who after sentencing find out what the truth was, saying “if we knew the facts we would not have voted that way”. Think about all the things that are kept from juries. Someone rapes 12 women, but on trial number 13, the defence is allowed to call the rapist a “honorable and upstanding member of the community”, but the prosecution cannot mention that the guy has a track record.
Look up “fully informed jury” on the internet for an education.