Key moments in Nikita Hand's case against Conor McGregor

Nikita Hand has won her civil case against Conor McGregor.

Ms Hand was awarded nearly €250,000 in damages after the High Court jury found that she was raped by Conor McGregor in a Dublin hotel in December 2018.

There were no exemplary or aggravated damages.

Here are the key moments.

Medical evidence and the tampon

The medical evidence was crucial to Nikita Hand's case.

The first and last witnesses in this trial gave evidence about a tampon which the court heard had to be removed from Ms Hand’s body by a doctor, using a forceps, on the day after the incident was alleged to have taken place.

Dr Daniel Kane, from the Sexual Assault Treatment Unit at the Rotunda Hospital described the tampon as being "wedged" at the very top of her vagina.

He also said she had a possible internal tear in her vagina and a "multiplicity" of injuries, including bruising on all four limbs. He said he classed her injuries as "moderate to severe".

A paramedic who brought Ms Hand to hospital said she had not seen such a level of bruising on a person for a long time.

Conor McGregor said he did not cause any of the bruises and said "there was no tampon" when he was present.

The final witness, Dr Basil John Farnan said it would be "peculiar" if anyone were to ask him if they could have sex with a tampon in, although he said he had come across people who had done it.

CCTV footage

The CCTV footage showing Nikita Hand, Mr McGregor, Mr Lawrence and Ms Kealey at the Beacon Hotel in Sandyford was shown to the jury and was frequently referenced by the defendants and their lawyers in support of their denials that Ms Hand was raped or was in any distress at all.

It also formed part of the DPP’s rationale for not going ahead with a criminal prosecution.

The footage showed the party going up to the penthouse in the lift from the car park at around 12.35pm.

All four were seen going back to the car park at around 6.15pm.

Mr McGregor and Ms Kealey left in a car but Ms Hand and Mr Lawrence spent almost an hour hanging around the lift, going in and out of it and trying to get back up to the penthouse apartment.

Ms Hand appeared affectionate towards both men and in the later footage had her arms around Mr Lawrence and was kissing him at a number of points.

The footage also showed that she was in the car park when she sent a text message to her boyfriend, not in the hotel bedroom as she had told gardaí.

She was barefoot and carrying her shoes and bag at points in the footage.

Ms Hand was upset as the footage was shown, particularly when she seemed to be staggering at one point.

She told the jury she looked "very, very drunk" and because she did not remember any of it, she said it was really hard to watch.

Mr McGregor and Mr Lawrence’s lawyers said the footage showed that Ms Hand was not in distress and that she was able to function and to lie to her boyfriend via text.

Mr Lawrence’s lawyer said she did not look like someone who was alleging she had been brutally raped a couple of hours earlier.

The recorded conversation

Nikita Hand’s obvious distress in the aftermath of the alleged rape was brought straight into the courtroom on Chancery Street six years later.

Mr McGregor’s Senior Counsel, Remy Farrell played a recording of a conversation she had with her then boyfriend in the early hours of the morning of 10 December 2018, after she had returned home.

As well as her upset at that time, the trauma she was still experiencing was also visible to everyone watching and listening to her.

Ms Hand crouched in the witness box with her head in her hands as the audio was played.

She asked for a break midway through and collapsed into sobs as she did so. She cried frequently throughout the evidence.

In the conversation recorded by her then boyfriend, Stephen Redmond, he repeatedly asked her to identify who had raped her.

He said she was obviously very drunk, and he told her he was afraid she would fall asleep and would not remember what had happened in the morning.

She told him the person who had raped her had choked her three times and had threatened her that he would kill her.

Mr McGregor’s lawyers pointed out the many lies she had told in the conversation, about where she had been and who she was with.

Ms Hand said lying to her boyfriend was not a crime but what happened to her was.

Although the recording was introduced by the defence, to show how Ms Hand had lied, many observers in court felt it had actually been helpful to Ms Hand’s case.

It showed she was extremely drunk, it referenced some of the complaints she continued to make, such as having been choked - showing that she had not made up details in the cold light of day.

More importantly, her distress sounded genuine and profound.

'The mask slipped'

Conor McGregor lost his temper almost as soon as Nikita Hand’s Senior Counsel John Gordon began cross examining him.

Mr Gordon seized on the fact that Mr McGregor had told his own counsel that he wanted to get all the facts of the case out there and quizzed Mr McGregor about why he had not given his phone to gardaí.

After a few minutes of questions and answers about this, Mr McGregor raised his voice.

He insisted he did want to get everything out there and asked why they had not got the "statement from the taxi driver" who said "she was sucking his fucking dick in the back of the car".

His comment and the aggressive and contemptuous tone in which he said it drew gasps in court from onlookers and from the jury.

It may have been the final straw for the jurors.

In his closing speech Mr Farrell referenced a number of other times Mr McGregor’s legal team had noticed that the jury were not impressed with his client.

Mr Farrell said they had heard the intake of breath when Mr McGregor referred to "two lovely ladies", he said his client may have been ill advised to describe Nikita Hand as "somewhat bombastic".

Mr Farrell also referred to hand gestures Mr McGregor had made when referring to the "provocative" picture Ms Hand had sent him via Instagram. And Mr Farrell acknowledged that the jury may also be "unimpressed" with a man who leaves the family home on a Saturday, goes into town and ends up drinking with women in penthouses.

It was all "unlikely to endear him greatly" to the jurors, Mr Farrell said.

Mr Gordon, on behalf of Ms Hand, described it as the moment the mask slipped.

He said they had witnessed a stream of invective aimed directly at his client across the courtroom. "What does that tell you about Mr McGregor?" he asked.

In his charge, Mr Justice Alexander Owens told the jurors that Mr McGregor had made a claim that Ms Hand had been seen engaging in lewd behaviour.

He told them it was a claim they must disregard as there was absolutely no evidence for it.

Danielle Kealey’s evidence

Danielle Kealey was a witness for the defence, called on behalf of Mr McGregor, although she did not sound particularly thrilled to be speaking to lawyers for any of those involved in the case.

She had been with Nikita Hand in the Beacon Hotel when the rape was alleged to have occurred.

She told the court she was "surprised" to hear what was alleged to have taken place between Mr McGregor and Ms Hand.

She said "no one was in bad form" and she "didn’t notice anything had happened" when she was leaving the Beacon Hotel that evening.

She agreed she had sex with James Lawrence in one room of the penthouse while Mr McGregor and Ms Hand were in the other - although she said it happened only once while Mr Lawrence insisted they had sex three times.

She said when Mr McGregor and Ms Hand came out of the other bedroom "everything was fine". No one seemed upset, she said.

She told the court she had received an Instagram message from Ms Hand some time later telling her she had been raped.

Ms Kealey told her she had not seen anything. She said she had never seen Ms Hand again or spoken to her after that.

Ms Kealey was described by Mr McGregor’s lawyer as not being "hugely enthused" to be in court.

In his comments to the jury Mr Justice Owens described her evidence as "minimal" but warned that they could not speculate about what she might have said if she was more forthcoming - or "on the rack in the tower of London."

James Lawrence

After Conor McGregor had been given further details in January 2019 about Ms Hand’s allegations and had been shown pictures of her injuries, he made a further short statement to gardaí suggesting another man could have been involved.

He then told gardaí that he believed James Lawrence had slept with her after he had left the Beacon hotel.

Mr Lawrence came forward and made his own statement to gardaí, telling them he had had sex with Ms Hand twice.

But Mr Lawrence strenuously rejected the suggestion by Ms Hand’s lawyers that the plan was to make him a "patsy" or a fall guy for Mr McGregor or that the two men were in "cahoots" - trying to make Ms Hand look like "even more of a hussy" than they were already saying she was.

Mr Lawrence said not "in a million years" would he do this and asked why he would put himself up for the rape of a woman.

He was also questioned on his sexual activity on the day. By his own account he had sex with Danielle Kealey three times.

He said he was later "peer pressured" to go back to the hotel and have sex with Ms Hand because he said she was coming on to him in front of one of Mr McGregor’s security staff. He said they had sex twice.

Mr Gordon put it to him that during the time he was back in the hotel room with Ms Hand, another security man had given evidence that he did not see them having sex and described them as fully clothed and talking when he checked the room on a number of occasions.

Mr Gordon asked him how he managed to fit in sex twice with Ms Hand, as well as a meal of hamburgers and chips.

Mr Lawrence insisted they may not have been fully naked, that they put their clothes back on after each time they had sex and it "didn’t last that long".