The jury in the civil trial of Conor McGregor has told the judge they saw somebody pointing a mobile phone at them on Thursday from the upstairs public gallery and were worried that any photos or filming would be “circulated”.
Recording and photography is prohibited in the court area, said Mr Justice Alexander Owens who then sent a garda to the gallery.
“It is a contempt of court to take photos of the jury – it is totally unacceptable – and there will be steps taken in the event that anyone is suspected of that,” said Mr Justice Owens, who is hearing the fourth day of evidence in the trial.
Mother of one Nikita Hand is giving evidence in the High Court civil trial and alleges that mixed martial arts star Mr McGregor “brutally raped and battered” her in a Dublin hotel.
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Ms Hand is seeking damages from Mr McGregor and James Lawrence, of Rafter’s Road, Drimnagh, Dublin 12, arising from the events of December 9th 2018, at a penthouse suite in the Beacon Hotel in Dublin where she alleges she was raped.
Both Mr McGregor and Mr Lawrence deny the allegations.
On Friday, at the High Court, Ms Hand told Remy Farrell SC, for Mr McGregor, that she was “too scared” to tell her boyfriend of the events of December 9th 2018, and said Mr McGregor warned that she would be “killed” if she disclosed his identity to anyone in relation to the alleged rape.
Ms Hand told Mr Farrell that she had told her then boyfriend that she believed she was in the Morgan Hotel in Dublin city because the bath and the decor looked alike.
Ms Hand also said she did not want her boyfriend to know the truth of what had happened because she claimed she did not want to “hit reality” when she returned home to her boyfriend at around 2am on December 10th 2018.
Mr Farrell put it to Ms Hand that she lied to her boyfriend because she did not want him to know that she was in a penthouse suite in the Beacon Hotel with her female friend and two men.
Ms Hand said she had lied to her boyfriend because she was “after being raped and battered” by Mr McGregor and that she “didn’t care about anything, just about my body, I was so sore and upset and knew I had to go to hospital”.
John Fitzgerald SC, for Mr Lawrence, said his client was “here not because of what you [Ms Hand] said but because of what he said to the guards in January 2019. He brought himself into this case”.
When Ms Hand went to gardaí in January 2018 alleging that she had been raped by Mr McGregor, Mr Lawrence had to give a witness statement in which he claimed that he twice had consensual sex with Ms Hand after Mr McGregor left the Beacon at around 6.20pm.
Ms Hand said that Mr Lawrence’s claim of consensual sex was “lies” but that she could not remember large portions of the night of December 9th 2018.
Mr Fitzgerald said that in her complaint to gardaí and in her interview to the sexual assault treatment unit in the Rotunda Hospital that she referred “throughout” to a single male attacker, whom she alleges was Mr McGregor.
Mr Fitzgerald put it to Ms Hand that she also told her friends that there was a sole attacker and a single allegation of rape.
Ms Hand has told the trial that she was “devastated” by the DPP’s decision not to prosecute either man on grounds of insufficient evidence.
Ms Hand told Mr Fitzgerald that she had no memory of the night after she woke up around 6pm in the hotel next to Mr McGregor and that while gardaí showed her stills of CCTV footage from the hotel she had no memory of it.
Ms Hand told Mr Fitzgerald she was “shocked” by Mr Lawrence’s statement claiming they had consensual sex because, after she told him about “what Conor does to women”, he was calming her down, got her a drink and food and was trying to reassure her.
“Do you not believe him?” asked Mr Fitzgerald. “Absolutely [not],” said Ms Hand.
The trial before Mr Justice Owens and a jury of eight women and four men continues at the High Court and is expected to last two weeks.
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