Inside the night out Conor McGregor sexually assaulted his rape accuser

Conor McGregor and his rape accuser Nikita Hand weren’t entirely unknown to each other before the mixed martial artist sexually assaulted her.

They lived quite different lives in December 2018. McGregor, then 30, was ‘Notorious’ – by now his world famous persona, with a fan base to boot.

He had Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) titles under his belt, and he’d just earned an estimated $130million in a boxing match he lost to Floyd Mayweather Jr.

Being from the same part of Dublin, Ms Hand, a hair colourist in a Goatstown salon, moved ‘in the same circles’ as McGregor.

She had just bought a house with her boyfriend, who was friends with the brother of Dee Devlin, McGregor’s partner since 2008, fiancée since 2020, and the mother of his four children.

But they didn’t really know each other, Ms Hand told the court, which yesterday found him liable of sexually assaulting her.

That night in December 2018, Ms Hand had been up for 24 hours, staying late at the salon for pre-drinks with her colleagues before going to a circus-themed Christmas party in Ayrfield, north Dublin.

They then trekked across the city to the Goat pub, where they stayed until close, before crossing the carpark back to the salon where they continued drinking and Ms Hand took cocaine.

McGregor, meanwhile, was at a closing party for techno club District 8 in central Dublin, where he was driven by his security guard and accompanied by a second car and driver.

He was pictured on stage at the venue, which was due to bulldozed and turned into a hotel, before his entourage moved on to Krystal nightclub.

There he bought rounds of drinks and took cocaine, before asking his security guard to book a hotel room around 4.30am.

Christmas party season was in full swing and the city centre hotels were full.

But there was a penthouse suite of two adjoining rooms on the seventh floor of the Beacon Hotel in Sandyford available from midday.

It was just over a mile down the road from the salon in Goatstown, where Ms Hand and colleague Danielle Kealey were the last ones left.

McGregor routinely booked hotel rooms for the possibility of having sex. That night he was on a mission, Ms Hand’s barrister, John Gordon, told the court.

But McGregor’s entourage was calling it a night. His friend James Lawrence went to bed with his girlfriend, and two women with the group went home, after leaving Krystal at 7am

That’s when McGregor messaged Ms Hand on Instagram. She was to be their replacement, her barrister John Gordon told the court.

The pair had spoken on the social media platform in the months before.

Ms Hand expressed interest in McGregor’s own-brand whiskey bottles. McGregor replied saying she could have anything she wanted.

She sent him a picture of herself in a scarlet jumpsuit. McGregor asked where she was. Then they swapped phone numbers.

In a luxury black saloon, McGregor picked her and Ms Kealey up at the salon around 9am, driving to collect Mr Lawrence and a bag of cocaine, which they shared in the back until the hotel suite became available

There they ordered full sized bottles of Bacardi rum, vodka and mixers to the room, where they played music via Bluetooth on the hotel television.

By the time Ms Hand left, she had bruises on all four limbs, including purple and blue bruising along her hands and wrists, a bloodied scratch to her breast and tenderness to her neck.

She also had a possible tear in her vagina from a tampon wedged so far up, it had to be removed using forceps.

The doctor who removed it out at the Rotunda Hospital’s sexual assault treatment unit described Ms Hand’s injuries as ‘moderate to severe’.

Ms Hand had been ‘out for a good time’, her barrister said, ‘but things went badly wrong, as far as she was concerned, having gone to the hotel with Mr McGregor and his friend’.

When Ms Kealey and Mr Lawrence went to have sex in one of the rooms, Ms Hand was left alone with McGregor. She did not feel comfortable.

She told the court: ‘I remember just standing beside the bed. He was standing here.

‘He started to try to kiss me. He was rubbing my face. I knew what he was looking for… I didn’t want to have sex. I was there to have a party and to have a good time.

‘He just wouldn’t take no for an answer. He pinned me to the bed. He kept telling me ‘Relax, baby, relax’ and rubbing my face.’

Ms Hand said she didn’t want to have sex and tried to ‘talk him around’ by mentioning McGregor’s partner, Dee Devlin.

But, she said: ‘He pinned me down to the bed and pressed his whole body down on top of me and I couldn’t breathe. I had my two arms up.

‘I couldn’t move, I couldn’t breathe. The more I tried to get away or struggle the more he liked it.’

She continued: ‘The only thing I could move was my head, so my only defence was to try and bite… I don’t know exactly where, but I know he didn’t like it so he flipped me around and had me by the neck and tried to choke me.’

Thinking she was ‘going to die’ as McGregor choked her, Ms Hand froze.

She said: ‘I just let him do whatever he decided to do after that, so I could survive.

‘He let me go. I remember saying sorry to him. I kept saying, “I’m sorry, I’m sorry”. I felt like I had done something wrong. I kept saying sorry to reassure him I wouldn’t tell anyone, so he wouldn’t hurt me again.

‘Then he said, “That’s how it felt in the octagon, and I had to tap myself out three times”. I just thought, that’s a weird thing to say.’

This appeared to be a reference to a major fight McGregor forfeited in October 2018 after his opponent placed him in a neck crank.

Asked about this, McGregor denied Ms Hand’s claim, saying: ‘No prideful person like me would highlight my shortcomings. It’s not in my nature. It’s a full-blown lie.’

McGregor also challenged Ms Hand’s version of events, instead describing what happened as ‘vigorous, athletic, physical and prolonged’ consensual sex that was ‘not rough’.

In the aftermath, Ms Hand was starting to dress herself when McGregor told her to lie down with him, at which point she fell asleep.

Waking up in a panic, Ms Hand texted her partner, explaining to the court: ‘I was worried because I’d fallen asleep and obviously wasn’t keeping in contact.

‘I said, “I’m having a great time, I’m so drunk”. I just didn’t want to worry him.’

Her behaviour after this was somewhat erratic, which the judge reminded the jury can happen after a sexual assault, when memory lapses are common.

All four people left the penthouse around 6.15pm, returning to the car park where McGregor and Ms Kealey left in one vehicle.

CCTV footage showed Ms Hand being affectionate towards both McGregor and Mr Lawrence, who remained at the hotel with Ms Hand for another hour.

In it, she can be seen barefoot and staggering while having her arms around Mr Lawrence and kissing him several times.

McGregor and Mr Lawrence’s lawyers claimed this showed Ms Hand was not in distress.

But Ms Hand said: ‘I see a very vulnerable woman, a drunk woman who did not know what she was doing, who should have been looked after, who should have been taken home in that state.’

As she looked at her bruised arms, memories of the hours before flashed in Ms Hand’s head, and she asked Mr Lawrence how he could ‘turn a blind eye’ to what McGregor had done.

She said: ‘Things were coming back to me…Reality was kind of hitting.’

Ms Hand doesn’t remember leaving the Beacon, only waking up in a taxi feeling unprepared to ‘face reality’ and tell her partner what happened.

Instead, she first went to the home of her salon manager, Emer Brennan, who urged her to contact a rape crisis centre instead of going home and having a shower.

She finally told her boyfriend when she returned home at 2am and broken down in tears.

Initially she did not want to tell him who had raped her, saying in a recorded conversation that ‘he’ll f***ing kill me’.

But her boyfriend urged her to speak out. When her mother saw her the morning after, she called police and an ambulance.

Even advanced paramedic Eithne Scully, who has 16 years of experience, was shocked by Ms Hand’s injuries.

She told the court: ‘I haven’t seen somebody so bruised in all my time.’

Ms Hand’s GP, pharmacy and psychotherapy costs amounted to more than £3,000, the court heard.

Psychiatrist Dr Ann Leader, who has seen more than 5,000 cases of sexual abuse, said Ms Hand showed classic symptoms of trauma – PTSD, suicidal thoughts, panic attacks, flashbacks, depression and anxiety – after the attack.

Ms Hand gave a statement to police in January 2019. McGregor subsequently gave his own statement to police, before replying ‘no comment’ to 100 further questions.

When shown photos of Ms Hand’s bruises, he suggested they may have been from another man, before finally claiming she had had sex with Mr Lawrence.

Represented by same solicitors as McGregor, who footed the legal bill, Mr Lawrence then came forward as a witness and next day and claimed he had twice had sex with Ms Hand at the hotel after McGregor had left.

This was news to Ms Hand.

Ultimately, the prosecution service decided not to pursue criminal charges against McGregor or Mr Lawrence.

However, a jury in a civil trial has now found McGregor liable for the attack on Ms Hand. The court has ordered him to pay €248,603.60 in damages to Ms Hand.

The jury found that Mr Lawrence did not assault her.

Speaking outside the court on Friday, Ms Hand, now 35, said her story is ‘a reminder that no matter how afraid you might be to speak up, you have a voice’.

Get in touch with our news team by emailing us at webnews@metro.co.uk.

For more stories like this, check our news page.