A WOMAN WHO is taking a damages claim against Conor McGregor has told the High Court that she thought she wasn’t going to see her daughter again when the Mixed Martial Arts fighter allegedly choked her before he allegedly sexually assaulted her.
Nikita Hand (Ní Laimhín) alleges that McGregor (36) “sexually assaulted her, and in effect, raped her” in a hotel penthouse in Dublin on 9 December 2018, and that a second defendant, James Lawrence, of Rafter’s Road, Drimnagh, “did likewise”, Mr Justice Alexander Owens told the jury yesterday.
The allegations in the action are fully denied.
The action was brought in 2021 against McGregor. The civil trial is expected to last two weeks.
Ms Hand (35) began giving evidence in the trial on Tuesday afternoon. She resumed giving evidence this morning on the second day of the trial.
Speaking to her counsel, Ray Boland SC, from the witness box, she told the court that McGregor pinned her down on the bed and “pressed his whole body weight down on top of me so I couldn’t breathe”.
She said that she had her arms up against her chest. “I couldn’t move or breathe. The more I kept trying to get away from him and struggle, the more he liked it. He turned around and said ‘Go on, I love that’,” she said.
Ms Hand became emotional at this point.
She told the court that the only thing that she could move was her head, “so my only defence was to try bite him”.
She said that she couldn’t remember exactly where she bit him, “but I know I bit him”.
“I bit him and he didn’t like it, so he flipped around and had me by my neck.”
Ms Hand was crying and shaking as she attempted to continue her evidence, telling the court: “I’m really struggling with this right now, I’m sorry.”
Mr Justice Owens instructed that a break be taken at this point and the court was adjourned for five minutes before the evidence continued.
Ms Hand said she was trying her best to get away from McGregor, “trying to shove him and wiggle my way out, do whatever I could”.
She said she remembers biting him really hard. She said that they had turned around and she remembers his arm around her neck, choking her, while she was sitting on the bed.
“He put his arms around my neck and choked me three times,” she said.
She told the court that the first two chokeholds did not last long, but that the third one was held longer and it was stronger.
Asked what effect the choking had on her, she said: “I just froze and I couldn’t move and I couldn’t breathe. I just kept looking at the bedpost and thinking about my daughter. I just kept thinking I was going to die. I wasn’t going to see my daughter again.”
Ms Hand said that McGregor then let go of her. “I remember I was saying sorry to him. I kept saying ‘I’m sorry, I’m sorry’ because I felt like I had done something wrong, so I kept saying sorry to reassure him so he wouldn’t hurt me again.
“And then he said ‘That’s how I felt when I was in the Octagon and I had to tap myself out three times’. And I just thought it was such a weird thing to say,” she said.
She told the court that she promised him she wouldn’t tell anybody anything. “And then I just did whatever he needed to do after that so I could survive. My mind was just completely gone, I wasn’t myself anymore.”
Asked to describe what McGregor did, Hand told the court that he was “really aggressive with me” and that he kept pulling her clothes and “shoving my head down for me to do things and I kept pulling my head back”. They were both still clothed at this point, she said.
She said that she doesn’t remember when their clothes were removed. Asked to describe what happened when they were both naked, she told the court: “He raped me.”
She said that she was lying down on her back at that point. “It felt like it was going on for ages… and then it was over. It was done.”
When asked if she could recall any injuries after the alleged incident, she told the court: “When he was raping me, I was completely numb. I couldn’t feel anything because I was completely numb. But he hurt me when he choked me and was pushing down on my body and pushing me about, but then when he finally raped me, I just completely froze.”
She described noticing bruising on her arms after the alleged assault, and said that she didn’t have any bruising on her body before she went out the previous night.
She said that when McGregor leaned his body on top of her, she was trying to release her arms and defend herself and that her watch cut her breast during this.
A gold Michael Kors watch was presented to Ms Hand, and she indicated that it was the watch that she was wearing during the alleged assault. The watch was entered into evidence.
She said that after the alleged assault, she sat on the side of the bed and started to put her clothes on. “[McGregor] told me to lie down for a few minutes and I did and I fell asleep,” she said.
She told the court that she had her period during the alleged incident. She said she had changed her tampon in the salon after they returned there from The Goat bar and before she and her friend had left the salon to go with McGregor.
When asked where the tampon was during the alleged assault, she said: “The tampon was still inside me.”
After the alleged assault, Hand told the court that she woke up “in a panic”.
She said she asked McGregor what time it was, because her watch was broken. She said he told her she wouldn’t get the time from his watch because “it doesn’t work”.
She said she went to her bag and took out her phone to text her partner at the time. “I was worried about him because when I fell asleep, I wasn’t keeping in contact with him and I was worried he was worried about me,” she told the court.
“I texted him and said I was having a great time, I’m so drunk. I just didn’t want to worry him.”
Ms Hand said she was confused when she woke up and everybody was leaving. She said McGregor said that there were cars for them to go home. She said that he brought her friend home and she was going to go in a car with James Lawrence “because I live his way”.
She said the group of four went down to the carpark in the lift and McGregor left with her friend. She said she remembers going back up to the penthouse with Lawrence.
“I remember breaking down because things were kind of coming back to me. I remember looking at my arms and I turned around and said to James ‘Do yous all put blind eyes to what Conor does to women?’,” she said.
She told the court that Lawrence asked her ‘What are you trying to say, Conor done that to you?’. She told him yes, and she told the court that he put his hand to his head and said ‘I can’t believe you were in that room and I was here while that was happening to you’.
She said she remembers Lawrence telling her to relax and to have a drink and some food. She told the court that she remembers food being in the room, but she doesn’t remember eating anything. “I was in and out a lot, panicking,” she said.
Ms Hand said she remembers waking up in a taxi. She said she began to try and get in contact with her partner’s sister. “I didn’t want to go home. I didn’t want to face reality and telling [her partner] what happened. I wanted to go and see a friend first.”
She said she couldn’t get through to her partner’s sister so she texted another friend to see if she could get in touch with her. She said she remembers the taxi driver asking her for money and that she had “no idea” where she was.
She told the court that she realised that the manager of the salon where she worked would need the keys. The taxi took her to her manager’s house and she paid the driver.
“I just remember arriving at [her] house and I was really upset and telling her what happened,” she said. She said she told her what had happened and who was involved.
“She just was really upset for me and she told me not to go home and not to have a shower, to ring the Rape Crisis Centre.”
She asked Ms Hand if she wanted to take photographs of her injuries and she said yes. Her manager took them on her phone. “She was just shocked at how much bruising was on my body,” she said.
These photographs were subsequently deleted after Ms Hand told her she did not want to press charges. “I told her to delete them the following day. I wasn’t pressing charges, I wasn’t doing anything about it and I didn’t want anyone to know,” she told the court.
Ms Hand said that after leaving her manager’s home, she went to her home and told her partner what had happened to her, “but I didn’t tell him who it was. I didn’t go into detail. I didn’t want to face it”.
She said she went to bed without taking a shower. She had changed into pyjamas. She said she texted her partner ‘You deal with our daughter and I’ll deal with myself’.
She told the court that she drove to her mother’s house. She said she was “banging down her door” and that when her mother saw her, “she knew I’d been hurt”.
She said she asked her to take her to A&E so that she could have the tampon that was still inside her removed “and I could just forget about everything”. But she said her mother told her that she couldn’t do that and she rang an ambulance.
She said Gardaí arrived to the house first and that caused her to “freak out”. She said she didn’t want them to be there “because I didn’t want to press charges or do anything about it”.
She said she went to the hospital in the ambulance. She described crying and being in pain in the ambulance and not being able to “sit easy”.
Ms Hand told the court that when she arrived at the hospital, Gardaí were there and they were asking her lots of questions but that she wasn’t telling them the circumstances of the alleged incident. “I just wasn’t communicating with them at all.”
After a few hours, she was brought to the Rotunda Hospital Sexual Assault Treatment Unit. She described the examination as “the worst thing I ever had to go through”.
She said that Dr Daniel Kane, who gave evidence yesterday, was able to remove the tampon, which was “really painful”.
She said that in the days that followed, she didn’t want to be alone and she was afraid to be on her own. “I was just afraid for my life,” she said.
She said she made contact with the Dublin Rape Crisis Centre around a week or so after the alleged assault. She said that before Christmas, she attempted to go to Crumlin Garda Station to give a statement about the alleged assault “but I ended up having a panic attack and I didn’t go through with it”.
“I just wanted to have a normal Christmas for [her daughter] as much as possible.”
She said that it took a while for her injuries to clear up and that she was “up and down” emotionally.
Hand told the court that she made a statement to An Garda Síochána on 5 January 2019 and an investigation subsequently commenced.
She said she was invited back to give a second statement to Gardaí in February 2019. This was because James Lawrence had told Gardaí that he had sex with her on 9 December 2018, she told the court.
“I was shocked because I’ve no memory of that whatsoever,” she said.
She told the court that she never had a problem with Lawrence and that she thought Lawrence “was being nice to me” and was trying to calm her down and reassure her. “I thought James was looking out for me and then he goes and said something like that. I was in complete shock.”
She told the court that she did not find Lawrence attractive and that she and her friend had just gone with McGregor to have fun. “I thought it was going to be a party. When we got to the hotel it was a different type of party. It wasn’t what me and [friend] was expecting.”
Ms Hand said that she returned to work after a month, but left after around five months. “My anxiety levels were too high and I just couldn’t work the same. It wasn’t the same for me. My mental health deteriorated completely.”
She said that while she was doing a customer’s hair in the salon, some of them would talk about the matter as it had appeared in newspapers at that point and the customer didn’t realise that she was the person involved. “It was a trigger for me.”
She said she was earning €450 gross per week plus tips while working in the salon. She said she had bought a home with her partner at the time around three years before the alleged assault and that there was a mortgage on the house.
She separated from her partner around six months after the alleged assault. “I was drinking a lot. I depended on drink a lot. I just didn’t care anymore about the relationship,” she told the court.
She said she doesn’t live at the house anymore and that she never wants to live in Drimnagh again. She said her former partner is renting the property out and that there is over €182,000 outstanding on the property’s mortgage which isn’t being paid at the moment.
Ms Hand told the court that she suffered from anxiety and depression following the alleged assault. She began receiving Disability Allowance of €219 per week in April 2021
In February 2023, she began working as a cleaner for two hours a day, five days a week, which was permitted in line with her Disability Allowance. However, she said that this increased anxiety and she handed in her notice in December 2023.
In February of this year, she said she began working as a hair colourist in a different salon in Dublin 12. She worked one long day and one half day, earning €12 an hour, but said she is no longer working there after she was certified unfit for work by a GP.
“It was just too local. People were talking. It was just a trigger again for me,” she told the court.
The court heard that she spent €860 on GP expenses, €592 on pharmaceutical expenses and €3,145 on counselling and psychotherapy.
She said she began attending a new counsellor around three or four months ago and that she has completed five sessions at a cost of €100 per session. She said it was very helpful but she can’t afford to continue attending. “[The counsellor] said that I’d need to see her every week and I just don’t have that type of money,” she told the court.
The court heard that she has been in a relationship with her current partner since 2021. She told the court that he is “really supportive”.
Text messages that were exchanged between Ms Hand and her former partner’s sister on the morning of 10 December 2018 were read out in court this morning.
In one message, Ms Hand texted that she was “not one bit ok” and that she was “traumatised”.
Another message read: “I was raped and battered. My body is black and blue.” A subsequent message read: “My tampon is stuck inside me. They’ll have to remove it.”
At 2.06pm that day, Ms Hand texted her former partner’s sister that police were taking her home. “I can’t wait to get home. That was the worst thing I’ve ever had to go through,” she said in the message.
When her former partner’s sister asked her how she was feeling, she texted: “Heartbroken.”
During the text exchange, her former partner’s sister asked Ms Hand the identify of the man who allegedly assaulted her. Ms Hand did not tell her his identity. When asked why, she texted: “Because I’m scared.”
At 4.29pm, Ms Hand texted: “I’m not pressing charges, 100%.” She also said: “The nurses said I’m lucky to be alive, he strangled me that hard.”
In another text that was read out in court, Ms Hand said: “I couldn’t face him or go through court. People would probably think I’m looking for attention.”
The evidence is continuing this afternoon.
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