IN COURT 24 of the Four Courts in Dublin last week, three men discussed whether it was possible for women to have sex when they had a tampon in.
Professor Basil John Farnan, a physician and the former principal forensic medical officer in Northern Ireland, was the last witness to be called in the civil case taken against Conor McGregor by Nikita Hand.
“‘Can I have sex with a tampon?’ is not really a question asked of a doctor,” he told Remy Farrell SC, for McGregor, before going on to say that he had experience with “a small number of ladies over the years” that he had treated where they had been wearing a tampon and forgotten it was there. In one case, a woman was “flabbergasted” and told him that she and her husband had had sex without knowing the tampon was there.
Under cross-examination by Ray Boland SC, for Hand, Farnan said he had never been asked by a patient if they could have sex with a tampon in.
“Presumably on the basis that no one would choose to have sex with a tampon in?” Boland asked. “I couldn’t make a comment on that,” Farnan said.
The point was being raised because it was the evidence of the tampon that formed a central part of Nikita Hand’s case against Conor McGregor, and James Lawrence. It was one of a number of key aspects over two weeks which the jury had to decide whose account to believe – Hand’s or McGregor’s.
This case raised questions of consent, but it also turned on the physical evidence available to the court.
On the first day of the civil trial, Hand told the court that when McGregor raped her in the penthouse of the Beacon Hotel on 9 December 2018, she had a tampon in, and while she had no recollection of ever having sex with Lawrence, it was her case that if they did have sex, it couldn’t have been consensual, and that she would still have been wearing the tampon.
She made it clear to the court that she would never have sex while on her period, and would certainly never have sex while wearing a tampon.
However, during his evidence, McGregor said that Hand did not have a tampon in when he had consensual sex with her in the penthouse of the Dublin hotel.
“There was no tampon. Not from what I could see in broad daylight. Not from what I could see, not from what I could feel,” he said, adding that there was no discussion of a tampon and there was no blood.
When asked by Hand’s counsel if he was saying that the tampon was introduced after he had consensual sex with her, McGregor said: “It must have been.”
There being no tampon was something that Lawrence repeated during his own evidence to the court.
But we know there was a tampon, because Dr Daniel Kane described in court how he removed it when Hand presented to the Rotunda Hospital Sexual Assault Treatment Unit on the morning of 10 December 2018.
The details given made for uncomfortable listening.
Dr Kane explained how Hand was very distressed about the tampon at the hospital. He explained to the court how, during a forensic examination of Hand, he used a speculum to examine her, something which caused Hand to experience significant discomfort. He explained how sometimes, due to discomfort during these exams, a decision would be made to bring a patient into the operating theatre and to use general anaesthetic.
In this case, they removed the tampon from Hand without anaesthetic.
The tampon was wedged in the right side of her cervix at the very top of her vagina, five or six inches in. Dr Kane explained how he used a forceps to remove it. Upon its removal, he observed that it was “very friable” and was breaking apart. He was concerned that some of it may still have been retained inside, but he didn’t want to subject Hand to another examination with a speculum. With her consent, he used his finger to do a “sweep” inside her vagina to check if there was anything still there of the tampon. There wasn’t, but there was a sign of a tear or an abrasion on the back wall of her vagina.
Dr Kane told the court that of the 340 forensic examinations that he had performed, this was the first and only time that he had ever encountered a retained tampon after sexual intercourse.
He also told the court that this presentation was quite unusual in relation to the extent of bruising that was noted at the time of the examination.
During his evidence in court, Dr Kane recounted the “multiplicity” of injuries that he noted on Hand’s body during his examination of her.
An abrasion on the right side of her jaw which had been bleeding. A purple bruise on the right of her neck that “looked like a love bite”. On her right arm, three purple bruises consistent with “fingertip bruising”, a bruise midway down her forearm and two separate purple bruises on her lower arm. Purple bruising on the knuckles of her right hand that was tender on examination. On her left arm, a purple bruise on her upper arm, two separate bruises on the elbow joint, an abrasion on the elbow with three separate, linear abrasions below this, and four separate bruises on her lower arm. A purple bruise on her right shoulder. A purple-blue bruise on the right side of her upper back. “Extensive bruising” on her buttocks, with three separate bruises consistent with a handprint on her left buttock. A purple bruise on her right breast and a nine centimetre scratch on her left breast. Two separate purple bruises on the left flank of her abdomen. Four separate, purple bruises on the front of her right thigh. Two separate, purple bruises on her right kneecap, and bruising on her left thigh. Four of her acrylic nails were missing.
Hand’s bruising was also raised with Eithne Scully, one of the paramedics who examined Hand in the ambulance on the morning of 10 December 2018.
During her evidence, she told the court that Hand’s “chief concern at the time was about a tampon that had been pushed up way too far”.
She described the bruising that she saw on Hand. “She was very bruised. I haven’t actually seen somebody so bruised in a long time,” Scully told the court.
This statement was referred to during McGregor’s cross-examination. John Gordon SC, for Hand, asked if this was the worst case of bruising he had ever seen in his career. McGregor said no.
“Is it the worst case of bruising you’ve ever seen on a woman?” Gordon asked.
McGregor said no.
Giving her evidence, Hand was unequivocal. She told the court that McGregor pinned her down, choked her three times and raped her, and that she did whatever she could to try and get away from him.
“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,” she said about being choked.
She became emotional several times during her evidence and a number of breaks were taken.
The level of upsetting testimony heard in the civil trial didn’t put off members of the public. Every day, people arrived and squeezed into the public balcony to listen to the proceedings. Pensioners sat beside teenagers in school uniform. Those sat in the front row often leaned over the balcony to look down at McGregor, who was present most days directly below them.
Hand’s account of being “raped” and “battered” was what she had told the manager of the salon where she worked on the night of the assault when she got a taxi to her home, and what she told her former partner when she arrived back in the early hours of 10 December 2018.
A 38-minute recording that her former partner made when Hand did come home was played in court by the defence counsel during her cross-examination.
What the courtroom heard was a distressed woman telling her boyfriend that she had been raped, and refusing to tell him who the attacker was. Hand could be heard telling him that she was “black and blue” and had been “choked three times”, asking him to look at her neck and her knuckles “from fighting away from him”.
She was upset, obviously drunk, and asking her boyfriend to “just care about me” rather than trying to find out who raped her.
When questioned by Remy Farrell SC, for McGregor, Hand conceded that she had lied to her former partner when she told him she had been in the bar of the Morgan Hotel with her work colleagues after their Christmas party. She said she didn’t want to tell him the truth.
“I lied to my boyfriend, it’s as simple as that. Me lying to my boyfriend doesn’t take away what happened to me. Lying to your boyfriend is not a crime. What happened to me is a crime.”
Later – during his closing argument – Farrell told the jury that they may be unimpressed with the picture of a man that leaves his family home on a Saturday and ends up drinking with women in hotel penthouses.
“These are all aspects of Mr McGregor’s behaviour that might not endear him to you,” Farrell said. “I’m not asking you to like Mr McGregor. I’m asking you to look at the evidence. Should it matter that Mr McGregor might be somebody that some of you, maybe all of you, don’t like?”.
In the pleadings in the case, the defence said that Hand’s claim was false, malicious and being made in bad faith, deeming it an attempt at extortion.
“That really puts it up to my client. She’s a gold digger. She’s a fraud,” Hand’s counsel said.
This claim fell somewhat flat when the court learned that Hand had attempted to pursue a criminal case against McGregor, and that it was only after the DPP informed her in the summer of 2020 that they had decided not to prosecute – something she told the court she felt “devastated” and “let down” by – that she went to her solicitor to make a civil claim in October of that year.
When it was McGregor’s turn in the witness box, he repeatedly told the court that Hand was “full of lies”.
In contrast to Hand’s recollection of events, McGregor described Hand as being “joyed and excited” throughout their time in the penthouse of the Beacon Hotel. “The mood all the way through the evening was exactly the same. Very fun, very playful, very happy and full of energy,” he said.
He was adamant during his evidence that the sex between them was consensual, and went into great detail when describing the positions they had had sex in. His description of how he had persuaded James Lawrence to initially join them – and go the hotel – by telling him he had ”two boisterous ladies full of energy” and needed to “level it out and make it a party” did not go down well with certain members of the jury, according to counsel.
In his closing arguments, Remy Farrell told the court: “We do have ears. When McGregor gives his evidence and refers to two lovely ladies, we do hear the intake of breath from the jury box.”
He said they may have heard McGregor describe Hand as “somewhat bombastic” when they got into the car, and may not have appreciated the hand gestures in relation to what McGregor described as a “provocative” picture sent to him by Hand.
His cross-examination also had some uncomfortable moments. Asked why he never gave his phone to gardaí, he said “they didn’t ask”. Asked if he would like present his phone now, he said “Yeah, it’s a different phone, but if you want it, pal.”
He agreed that he had answered ‘no comment’ to more than 100 questions during garda interviews, and he finally said he “believed” he had paid James Lawrence’s legal fees after being asked numerous times, including by Mr Justice Alexander Owens.
McGregor also made a claim about Hand engaging in what the judge later referred to as “lewd behaviour” during a brief outburst in the witness box. Mr Justice Owens told the jury to disregard it as there was no evidence for it.
Recalling this moment in his closing arguments, John Gordon said: “The mask slipped.
“He lost his temper, and what did we witness? You witnessed it. A stream of invective aimed directly at my client across the courtroom. What does that tell you about Mr McGregor?” Gordon asked the jury.
He said McGregor was a liar who didn’t have the courage or the decency to own up to what he did. “He’s a coward. A devious coward, and you should treat him for what he is.”
The case against James Lawrence was a confusing one.
In a statement that McGregor made to gardaí after being shown pictures of Hand’s injuries, he suggested: “Are you sure she did not have sex with somebody else?”. He then told gardaí that he believed Lawrence had sex with Hand after he had left the Beacon Hotel.
Lawrence then came forward and told gardaí in February 2019 that he had consensual sex with Hand twice on the day in question.
During his cross-examination, he strenuously rejected a suggestion that he acted as a “patsy” who was to “take the fall” for McGregor, saying: “What man would put themselves up for the rape of a woman?”.
Hand said she had no recollection of ever being with Lawrence, and told the court during cross-examination by John Fitzgerald SC, for Lawrence, that she thought his claim was “a made-up story”. Her case was that if they did have sex, she was in no fit state to consent to it.
Before Lawrence told gardaí that he had sex with Hand, she had made no allegation against him. But for the fact that he made a statement to gardaí, she would never have made an allegation against him.
The jury found that Lawrence did not assault Hand.
Who do you believe?
In his charge to the jury, Mr Justice Owens said the case “really boils down to who you believe”.
“In my view, one side or the other is telling lies about what happened in the Beacon hotel room,” he said.
He told the jury that their role was to be judges of fact in the case. He said that the standard of proof in a civil action is on the balance of probabilities, explaining that something is proved on the balance of probabilities when you decide on the evidence it is more likely than not to have happened.
Mr Justice Owens told the jury that they must be objective, eliminate bias and look calmly at the evidence.
In the end, they deliberated on the evidence for six hours and ten minutes.
There had already been a heavy sense of nervous anticipation in the packed courtroom shortly after 2pm, but Mr Justice Owens returned to court to say that the jury intended to continue to deliberate until 6pm.
By 4.40pm, this feeling had grown tenfold.
Court 24 filled with solicitors and barristers again. Hand returned with her partner and her family. She was visibly shaking.
McGregor returned to court with his partner Dee Devlin, his parents Tony and Margaret, his sister Aoife and other members of his family, as well as supporters. He took deep breaths when he first sat down between his partner and his mother, who rubbed his arm.
At 4.46pm, the jury confirmed to the court that they had reached a verdict.
Did Conor McGregor assault Nikita Hand? Their answer was yes.
Hand broke down and was hugged by her partner and her family. McGregor shook his head and looked down. He put his arms around his partner and his mother after the judge and the jury left the room.
In a statement outside court, Hand said she hoped her case will remind victims of assault to keep “pushing forward for justice”.
“I hope my story is a reminder that no matter how afraid you might be: Speak up, you have a voice and keep on fighting for justice.”
If this article has impacted you, the National Rape Crisis Helpline is open 24 hours a day for people who have been affected by sexual violence. Tel: 1800 77 88 88
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