A woman has told a High Court jury that mixed martial arts (MMA) fighter Conor McGregor had “choked” her and then raped her, saying that she “just let him do whatever he needed to do so I could survive”.
Nikita Hand, in evidence during her civil action for damages against Mr McGregor and another man, James Lawrence, for alleged sexual assault, also said she was “completely devastated” when the Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) decided there was insufficient evidence to prosecute in relation to the alleged assaults of her at Dublin’s Beacon Hotel on December 9th, 2018.
The jury has heard Ms Hand (35), a hair colourist, was at a Christmas work party the previous evening and continued to party into the morning of December 9th, that she and a female friend were collected by Mr McGregor in his car at about 10.15am and, after driving around for a time and picking up Mr Lawrence, were driven to the hotel after noon that day.
Ms Hand, who made a statement to gardaí about the alleged assaults in January 2019, sought a review of the DPP’s decision not to prosecute, but it was upheld by the director herself on review, the jury was told on Wednesday.
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Correspondence from the DPP during 2020 referred to the case being “complex” and the director having concluded there was “no reasonable prospect” of conviction.
In response to concerns by Ms Hand over whether Mr McGregor’s identity had anything to do with the decision, the DPP said in a letter she could assure Ms Hand it did not.
On Wednesday, in evidence to her counsel, Ray Boland SC, Ms Hand said Mr McGregor had pinned her down onto a bed in the penthouse suite of the Beacon hotel on December 9th, 2018, and that she bit him in an attempt to resist. She said he choked her three times and she “just froze and I couldn’t move and I couldn’t breathe”.
“I thought I was going to die, I would never see my daughter again.”
She said Mr McGregor let her go and she kept saying “sorry, sorry” – “to reassure him so he would not hurt me again”. He had said “that’s how I felt when I was in the Octagon when I had to tap myself out three times”, she said.
She promised him she would not tell anybody, she said, “and I just let him do whatever he needed to do so I could survive”.
He was “really aggressive” with her, pulling at her clothes, she said. He was trying to push her head down to his penis and she tried to move away, she added.
At some stage, her clothes were completely off and his were too, she said, and “he raped me”.
She had a tampon inside her at the time, she said. She would not have sex during the period, especially when she was wearing a tampon, she said.
The jury was told Mr McGregor later that day brought her friend home in his car and she and Mr Lawrence went with them to the car park before returning to the hotel suite.
She remembered breaking down in the room and seeing her bruises, and saying to Mr Lawrence: “Do you all put blind eyes to what Conor was doing?”
She said he had said: “What are you trying to say, Conor did that to you?” She said he told her to relax, he would get some food.
She remembered waking up in a taxi and going to a friend’s house and telling her what happened. Her friend was very upset for her and told her not to have a shower and to ring the Rape Crisis Centre, she said.
Becoming very distressed, she said her friend was shocked at how much bruising was on her body and took photos of it. She told her friend the next day to delete them because she did not want anyone to know.
Several text messages exchanged between Ms Hand and a friend on December 10th, 2018, were read to the jury, including texts in which she wrote that she had been raped.
The jury was also shown CCTV footage of Ms Hand, Mr McGregor, her friend and Mr Lawrence in a lift going up to the hotel penthouse just after 12.30pm on December 9th, 2018.
Other footage included Mr McGregor’s car leaving the car park at about 6.15pm that evening. Mr Boland said that was Mr McGregor leaving with Ms Hand’s friend.
Ms Hand agreed some footage showed herself and Mr Lawrence getting back into the lift barefoot that same evening. She agreed she appeared to be lying on the floor of the lift in one still and had a glass in her hand in some footage.
She said she had no memory of any of that, and no memory of other stills, including one from about 6.30pm showing her and Mr Lawrence with their arms around each other in the lift, and one of them leaving the hotel in a taxi after 10pm that evening.
Beginning his cross-examination of Ms Hand about 3pm, Remy Farrell SC, for Mr McGregor, asked about various calls and messages from and to her on December 9th, 2018.
She agreed she lied to her partner in a message at 8.25am saying she was going partying with the girls. She agreed she was in contact with Mr McGregor before that and said she did not want her partner to know she was going to a party with Mr McGregor.
She agreed, when she and a female friend were in Mr McGregor’s car waiting for him to come out of Mr Lawrence’s house later that morning, that she saw Mr McGregor come out with a bag of cocaine. She said she and her friend took some of the cocaine but she had not seen Mr McGregor take cocaine.
She agreed, when she texted her partner later that day that she was in The Goat pub, that it was a lie. At that time, 6.28pm, she was in the penthouse suite of a hotel having woken up on a bed earlier beside a man, she agreed.
The cross-examination continues on Thursday.
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