A PARAMEDIC WHO treated a woman the morning after she was allegedly sexually assaulted by Conor McGregor has told the High Court that she hadn’t “seen somebody so bruised in a long time”.
Nikita Hand (Ní Laimhín) alleges that McGregor “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 on the first day of the civil trial.
The allegations in the action are fully denied.
The action was brought in 2021 against McGregor. The civil trial is expected to last until next week.
On the fifth day of the trial, two paramedics who arrived at Hand’s mother’s home on the morning of 10 December 2018 and who accompanied her in the ambulance to the Rotunda Hospital Sexual Assault Treatment Unit gave evidence to the court.
Neil Dempsey, a paramedic with Dublin Fire Brigade since 2018, told the court that he received a call when he came on duty that morning, and went to Hand’s mother’s home in Drimnagh.
He told the court that after arriving, he and his colleague Eithne Scully attended to Hand in a bedroom of the home. He said her demeanour was “quite distressed” and that she was crying. He said he noticed “visible marks in and around her throat”.
He said Hand’s “chief concern” was “that she had a tampon that was up inside her and she said it had been there for an amount of time that she was concerned about”.
Dempsey said that he took her vital signs in the ambulance and that her heart rate was elevated. He said that en route to the Rotunda Hospital, he felt it was best practice not to continue to take her vital signs because she was distressed.
Eithne Scully, an advanced paramedic who had worked for Dublin Fire Brigade at that point for 16 years, told the court that she observed Hand to be “very withdrawn, very agitated and upset” on the morning of 10 December 2018.
“Her chief concern at the time was about a tampon that had been pushed up way too far,” Scully told the court.
When asked if she observed any injuries on Hand’s body, Scully said she had a small cut on her chin and there appeared to be bruising around her neck.
She said that when she examined Hand, she had bruising around her chest, around her breast, around her buttocks, thighs and on one of her lower legs.
“She was very bruised. I haven’t actually seen somebody so bruised in a long time,” Scully told the court.
Scully said that Hand told her she had been grabbed around the neck. She said she could recall Hand telling her something “about fighting somebody off”. She said that Hand did not name her alleged attacker.
Scully said that when they arrived at the Rotunda Hospital, Hand was “very upset”. She said she was “curled up” in the ambulance “and she came out of the ambulance in that curled up position”.
“We placed her into a wheelchair to take her in and going into the hospital, she just wanted to be under the blanket really,” she told the court.
CCTV from inside the ambulance was shown in court. It showed Hand inside the ambulance wearing pyjamas. She lies down and a blood pressure monitor is placed on her. Scully can be seen pulling Hand’s pyjama bottoms down to examine her legs. Bruising can be seen on her thighs.
As the footage continues, Hand can be seen becoming distressed on the way to the hospital. Her mother can also be seen in the ambulance beginning to comfort her.
Under cross-examination by Remy Farrell SC, for McGregor, paramedic Dempsey told the court that he made a statement to gardaí four days later. He agreed that he told Gardaí that when he asked Hand what had happened, she said she could hardly remember but she said she had been raped.
He also agreed that in his statement to gardaí, he said that Hand told her mother in the Rotunda Hospital “please don’t say anything”.
The court also heard from Dr Emma Quinn, who is a GP at the practice where Hand attends.
Quinn told the court that she saw Hand on 19 December 2018. She said that Hand told her she had been sexually assaulted and she was complaining of pain in her neck, and a sensation of a lump in her neck. She said Hand was distressed at the time.
Quinn told the court that she examined Hand’s neck for lumps and swelling. She said there was no external bruising at the time, noting that this was nine days after the alleged assault so she did not expect bruising to still be present.
Quinn said she noted tenderness on the left side of Hand’s neck which was consistent with internal bruising, “which was consistent with the story she told me of being held forcibly in the incident”.
She said she diagnosed internal bruising. She said this would take “a lot longer to resolve than the external bruising”.
“It can be there for a few weeks after an injury.”
Under cross-examination by Farrell, Quinn agreed that she had been at the medical practice for eight years and had treated Hand on a few occasions.
She agreed that in May 2018, she referred Hand for an MRI in respect of an issue she had in relation to her neck as a result of a road traffic accident.
Dr Frank Clarke, another GP at the practice who has known Hand since she was a child and treated her at the practice, also gave evidence in court.
Clarke told the court that he did not treat Hand that often when she was a child but that he saw her more from when she was a teenager and onwards.
He said that Hand had a history over many years of being an anxious person and that she struggled at times to manage life. He said she was working as a hairdresser, she had a child and a partner and that her mother needed help from time to time.
“Nikita was trying her best I suppose, but because of her personality, she would’ve been anxious and withdrawn,” Clarke told the court.
He told the court that she was prescribed 50 milligrams of Sertraline, an antidepressant which Clarke described as “a very popular medication for somebody struggling to manage anxiety and depression”
Clarke said it is an extremely common medication that is used by a lot of people. He said that 50 milligrams is a low dose, and that Sertraline is “not a drug of abuse.”
“You can’t abuse it,” he said.
Clarke said he completed a report of Hand’s treatment from the previous year in November 2020.
He said that having reviewed all visits to the practice, that Hand sometimes came to the practice alone and sometimes with mother.
“They were trying to support each other, both of them were struggling through those months to cope,” he told the court.
Clarke told the court that Hand had been unfit to work since 15 May 2019 (five months after the alleged assault) and that he provided certs for her absences from work and certs for social welfare for sick pay purposes.
He said Hand was working as a hairdresser at the time and the environment was “performance-orientated”.
“You’re dealing with people all the time, having conversations and trying to be cheery, and she wasn’t really coping with that,” Clarke told the court.
He said that Hand “felt very conscious of what had happened to her” and was very conscious of social media. He said she was scared of being identified because she felt unsafe if she was identified. “She was basically depressed and anxious and unable to do that kind of work,” he said.
He told the court that she continued to take Sertraline and that they increased the dosage in steps to 100 milligrams and then to 150 milligrams, but he said Hand had problems tolerating the increased dosage and experienced stomach problems. She no longer takes Sertraline.
Clarke said Hand was also prescribed Olanzapine during this period. He said it has a sedative effect and is not prescribed routinely. He said it is helpful “to deal with acute surges of panic and distress and sleeplessness”.
He said it would not be used “for simple sleep control”, adding that it would be used for somebody “who is having night terrors, panic, much more severe distress”.
Clarke told the court that Hand has struggled with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) since the alleged incident.
When asked to explain PTSD, Clarke said it is “caused by an extremely stressful or terrifying event”. He said people who experience is can either have been part of the event or have just witnessed the event.
He told the court that symptoms would include flashbacks, nightmares, severe anxiety, triggers, intrusive thoughts, upsetting dreams and nightmares, emotional distress and episodes of avoidance.
Clarke told the court that following the alleged assault, Hand’s relationship with her partner failed and she was having difficulty supporting her mother. He said she met her current partner in late 2020 and said this has been “a very positive thing for her”.
He told the court that she has been able to get into a more stable state in terms of her lifestyle and is “making very good progress along those lines”.
He said that Hand attempted to attend a cervical screening and found it “very difficult”.
He said she managed to attend in August 2021 but has not had a follow-up appointment.
When asked why she is nervous undertaking this manner of test, Clarke said: “Because she has PTSD.”
He said that, in summarising his report, he said that Hand “suffered serious physical and psychological injuries” and had ongoing symptoms of PTSD that require ongoing treatment.
Under cross-examination by Farrell, for McGregor, Clarke agreed that Sertraline is a drug that, when prescribed, would be taken every day by a patient.
When asked if something called discontinuation syndrome occurs when the drug is not taken, Clarke said that this would happen at a high dose “but at a low dose, that would be less common”.
He said the most common symptom people experience when they stop taking the medication is increased anxiety, jumpiness and “feelings of electric shocks”. He said that people generally think these shocks are “very strange and usually report them very clearly if they had that”.
Farrell asked Clarke about a medical legal report that he prepared in September 2018 in relation to a road traffic collision that Hand was involved in December 2016.
Clarke told the court that Hand experienced a “typical whiplash-type event” in relation to the collision.
When asked about a paragraph of the medical legal report that referred to Hand having attended for a review of back pain which stated that she “did not make good progress with physiotherapy” and had reported stress at work, Clarke said Hand was finding it hard to stand and bend over people to do their hair while she was working.
He told the court that she had “typical mild anxiety symptoms at that time” and it was “totally different” to the PTSD she began to experience following the alleged assault.
He said that her injury had not resolved “because of the nature of her work” where she was “standing for long periods and bending over people” to do their hair, adding that this would prolong recovery.
The court also heard evidence from Dr Ann Leader, a psychiatrist who has been practising for over 45 years.
She told the court that she has seen over 5,000 cases of people who have alleged sexual abuse and that this was her “area of expertise”.
She said she met Hand in December 2020 to prepare a report on her condition. She said she also had Hand’s medical notes from her GP practice and her 150-page statement to Gardaí.
Referring to the report she made, Leader told the court that Hand told her that she had been raped. She said that she told her that she felt she was losing control of her life and that she felt she was not there for her daughter.
“She was anxious, fearful. In my opinion, she came across as somebody who was traumatised,” Leader told the court.
She said she came to the conclusion that Hand was suffering from “severe PTSD”.
When asked what symptoms Hand had, Leader told the court that Hand had “very significant symptoms” and that these symptoms were “very pronounced and typical, in my opinion”.
Leader said that there are three subcategories of symptoms: avoidance symptoms, reexperiencing symptoms and anxiety symptoms. Leader said that a very important factor is that these symptoms “must meet the threshold of causing functional impairment” and be “severe enough to affect your level of functioning”.
“In my opinion, [Hand] did fulfil those criteria,” Leader said.
She told the court that Hand tried to block memories and emotions in relation to the alleged assault. She said she had a numbness and detachment from life in general, and that she was experiencing nightmares, intrusive persistent distressing thoughts about the alleged assault, and panic attacks.
She said that Hand described “becoming depersonalised”.
“When somebody is undergoing a severe traumatic event, it is quite common that they detach themselves from it because it is so shocking and traumatic, they’re not able to process it,” she said.
Leader said Hand described that “very clearly”. She said Hand described to her how she felt she was looking down on her own body during the alleged assault, and that she felt detached.
“Following that, she just kind of gave up and allowed what was happening to happen. She was not thinking straight and that is a very common feature of PTSD,” Leader told the court.
“Everything about her presentation was, I felt, classical of somebody who was traumatised, and the symptoms she related to me were classical, familiar to me and in keeping with PTSD,” she concluded.
Under cross-examination by Farrell, for McGregor, Leader told the court that her report was predicated on what she was told by Hand, along with other information she had read, including the medical notes from her GP.
Leader agreed that she did not have regard to the CCTV evidence of Hand at the Beacon Hotel on 9 December 2018.
Farrell asked Leader if Hand had indicated to her that she had experienced panic attacks prior to the alleged assault.
Leader told the court that Hand had told her she had experienced panic attacks in 2018 after she was involved in a road traffic collision in 2016. She said Hand had anxiety symptoms in relation to lifestyle stresses, including work stress, at the time.She said that Hand was referred to counselling at the time, but that she did not have PTSD then.
The civil trial, before Mr Justice Alexander Owens and a jury of eight women and four men, continues tomorrow.
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