I'm surprised he was found liable with some of the evidence presented. She goes to the hotel room, 2am, CCTV shows her kissing Connor and his buddy up and down. She has sex with both of them with the door open and her girl co worker in the other room. Texted her boyfriend after saying everything was fine. Goes to the hospital the next morning and sets up a rape case. I'm not convinced she was raped.
Its a long but comprehensive read :
https://www.rte.ie/news/courts/2024/1124/1482676-mcgregor-case/It seems Conor McGregor is not happy with the verdict of the jury in the civil case taken against him by Nikita Hand.
On the night the jury delivered its decision, he posted on X that he would be appealing. He suggested to his almost 11 million followers, on that platform, that a "modest" award was given for "assault". This was despite the context of the previous two and a half weeks, and despite Mr Justice Alexander Owens telling the jurors repeatedly that the assault they were deliberating about was rape. The judge told the jurors in the civil action that "rape is a form of assault" and if they found in Ms Hand's favour they would have to award substantial damages as "rape is a very serious matter".
Mr McGregor went on in his post to point out that aggravated or exemplary damages were not awarded by the jury. The post was deleted some time later.
By lunchtime on the following day, his mood seemed to have changed. He posted that it was "Deplorable what they done" and disparaged Ms Hand. He spoke about his friend James Lawrence, saying Mr Lawrence had been vindicated.
He described the High Court as "a court of feeling and opinion, brainwashed into people via the mainstream media. Not of fact!" And he said "we are not done yet. Not by a long shot." He repeated "appeal! Appeal! Appeal!"
Mr McGregor also reposted a lengthy post by Mr Lawrence on Instagram in which his friend also criticised Ms Hand.
After a number of hours all these posts, too, had been deleted by Mr McGregor.
Sources suggest that Mr McGregor, who arrived at court on the last day with his partner, Dee Devlin, in a chauffeur-driven Rolls Royce, was not expecting to lose this case.
Other sources say there was an effort at mediation early on in proceedings. But it appears the action did not come close at any stage to settling.
While the damages awarded have been described as being on the low side, another legal source suggested this might make the award "unappealable" as appeals in civil actions are often based on a claim that the damages are excessive.
Reaction of the juryIn his social media posts, Mr McGregor did not address what even his own lawyers identified as a huge problem for him in this case - the way his testimony was presented to the jury by him, and perceived by them.
Predicting what a jury is thinking or what jurors are going to do is a fool’s game. That doesn't stop journalists and lawyers from engaging in it - analysing body language and gestures to try to get an indication what the verdict will be. The amateur psychological analysis is often wrong. Not in this case.
As Mr McGregor gave his evidence in courtroom 24, it was hard not to feel exactly what was going on in the jury’s minds.
There were no obvious giveaway glances or gestures - no one said or did anything - but the feeling of contempt and horror at the things Mr McGregor was saying and the way he was saying them, radiated from the jury box where the eight women and four men sat.
It bubbled to the surface when Mr McGregor’s cross-examination began and his "mask slipped".
Under questioning from Ms Hand’s barrister, John Gordon, about why he hadn't given his phone to gardaí, Mr McGregor insisted he wanted "everything out there". Raising his voice, he said that included a "statement from the taxi driver" that she was "sucking his f*cking d*ck in the back of the car".
As he said it, there was very audible gasp in court from the direction of the jury box. The judge told Mr McGregor to restrain his comments and the trial moved on but it was a moment that was difficult to forget. The judge later reminded the jury that they had to disregard Mr McGregor’s allegation that Ms Hand engaged in "lewd behaviour" as there was "absolutely no evidence for it".
Closing speechMr McGregor’s lawyers were acutely aware of the effect he had on the jury.
In his skilful closing speech, senior counsel, Remy Farrell devoted considerable time to the jury’s feelings about his client, telling them he wanted to be "upfront" about the issue.
He said they may all loathe his client for all he knew. And he pointed out instances in Mr McGregor’s evidence which had been noticed by his own legal team.
Mr Farrell referred to an intake of breath from the jury when Mr McGregor referred to Ms Hand and her friend, Danielle Kealey, as "two lovely ladies", his hand gesture when he referred to the "slightly provocative" picture Ms Hand had sent him via a DM on Instagram, and his description of her as "somewhat bombastic" when she got into his car on the morning of Sunday 9 December 2018.
Mr McGregor’s descriptions of the "vigorous" "athletic" sex he claimed he had with Ms Hand, were accompanied by numerous gestures to demonstrate what he said were the "multitude of positions" they engaged in.
Mr Farrell told the jury they may also be "unimpressed" with a man who leaves the family home on a Saturday night, goes into town and ends up drinking with women in hotel penthouses.
Partners and liesThe double standards were hard to miss for the jury and for everyone else observing in the packed, uncomfortable court room.
Ms Hand was criticised by Mr McGregor and by his friend Mr Lawrence during their evidence for the lies she told her boyfriend about what she was doing on 9 December 2018. She was "well able" to lie to her boyfriend "in front of me," Mr Lawrence said about a text she sent her partner from the basement of the Beacon Hotel.
Mr Lawrence had gone home in the early hours of 9 December, after a night’s clubbing with Mr McGregor. He was in bed with his partner when Mr McGregor arrived back at his house in his car with Ms Hand and Ms Kealey a couple of hours later. Mr McGregor told the court he had "two boisterous ladies full of energy" in the car with him and he "needed to level it out and make it a party." "That’s what they wished for," he said.
Mr Lawrence eventually got into the car with Mr McGregor and the women, not even bothering to put on a pair of shoes. When he left the Beacon Hotel in a taxi around twelve hours later - after, according to his own account, having had sex five times with two different women, the court heard he asked the taxi driver to drop him in Crumlin village and not at his home because his partner would be there.
Mr McGregor also returned to his own partner and their children in their Kildare home, after spending the previous night and day drinking, taking cocaine and according to his own evidence, having unprotected sex twice with a woman he barely knew in a hotel room.
Mr McGregor is a global celebrity with more than 47 million followers on Instagram. He frequently shares pictures of his partner, and their children, many taken by his personal photographer, David Fogarty who gave evidence on his behalf during the trial. On Halloween, shortly before the trial began, he shared a slew of pictures of the family trick or treating.
On the weekend before it was expected he would give evidence himself, he shared a carousel of photographs of a family holiday in Warrenpoint in Co Down. And on the morning the judge was expected to finish his summing up and send the jury out to begin deliberating, he posted a picture of him and a young child, captioned "LOVE OF MY LIFE, MY DAUGHTER". That post was subsequently deleted.
There was only one brief mention of his long-term fiancée and the mother of his children in the trial. Speaking about how he first became friendly with Mr Lawrence, Mr McGregor said he would play the video game Call of Duty with Mr Lawrence at his house while waiting for "Dee" to finish work at the Children’s Hospital in Crumlin.
CCTV evidence v medical evidence
Mr McGregor and Mr Lawrence frequently referred to the CCTV footage shown to the court of Ms Hand in the lift and in the car park of the Beacon Hotel.
They said her demeanour and behaviour in the footage, did not match with her allegation of being brutally raped a few hours previously. Ms Hand was upset as she watched it, saying it showed someone who was "very, very drunk", and she did not remember any of it.
The response of both men to the medical evidence in the case was to say that they did not see any severe bruising on Ms Hand’s body. Both men also said she did not have a tampon in when they had sex with her. Mr McGregor said he would not have had sex with Ms Hand if she was on her period or if she had a tampon in.
But the tampon was there and was discussed by the first, and the last witnesses in the case. The prolonged discussions by male doctors and male barristers about tampons and whether or not a woman would notice if she had a tampon in during sex, were uncomfortable to listen to, but the evidence on the matter was crucial.
The first witness, Dr Daniel Kane, who examined Ms Hand at the Rotunda Hospital, said there was a tampon "wedged" so far into the top of Ms Hand’s vagina that he had to use a type of forceps to remove it. He said he had seen many women who had a tampon retained because they had forgotten about it. But, he said, he had conducted 340 examinations of women and this was the first time he found a tampon still inside a woman after sexual intercourse.
The last witness was also a doctor - a forensic physician who worked part time as a GP. Dr Basil John Farnan was asked by Mr Farrell if female patients ever asked if they could have sex with a tampon in. Dr Farnan said it would be a "peculiar" question but he had encountered people who had done it and hadn't noticed at the time.
There was some discussion about whether women who had had a child would be less likely to notice if they had left a tampon in before having sex than women who had not had children. Dr Farnan said a tampon might be pushed up by sexual intercourse or be up there anyway.
Nikita Hand’s barrister, Ray Boland, suggested that no one asked such a question "because no one would want to have sex with a tampon in?" Dr Farnan said he couldn't comment on that.
In his closing speech, Mr Farrell referred only briefly to the tampon suggesting that Ms Hand did not seem to be in discomfort in the CCTV footage taken on the evening of 9 December, compared with her discomfort in footage taken from the ambulance on the morning of 10 December.
The jury also had independent evidence of Ms Hand’s injuries. Dr Kane described her injuries, including a possible internal tear, as "moderate to severe". An experienced paramedic, Eithne Scully, said she had not seen a person so badly bruised "in a long time".
In a case described by Mr Justice Owens as coming down to "truth and lies", the medical evidence formed part of the "islands of fact" - or pieces of objective evidence that the jury could cling on to.
ConsentThe judge also warned the jurors to come to their decision on a sound evidential basis and not engage in "lazy assumptions" or "victim blaming".
Judge Owens said consensual sexual activity is where both sides are in "free and voluntary engagement."
He said submission was not consent, and it was not necessary to prove a person resisted, tried to run away or raise the alarm. He added that a person could freeze.
The judge told the jury that people may have consensual sex but he said it was different when someone was so intoxicated that they could not exercise free and voluntary will and "may simply be so out of it they have no clear idea as to what they are about."
He told them that they should be cautious about they think someone who is a victim of sexual assault should have done. And he said it was his observation that they may respond to an event in ways that may seem irrational.
He pointed out that wearing certain clothes on Instagram was not an invitation. "Of course men might be attracted to women," he said "but if they want to take it further it requires consent."
"The fact that a woman engages in risky activity like drinking or taking drugs does not mean they are up for sex.
"While excessive alcohol can lead to disinhibition you cannot engage in a presumption that the women who engage in this behaviour are promiscuous."
He also told them they could conclude that excessive alcohol affected good judgement and memory and could lead to patchy and fragmented memory of the night before.
The final hoursOn the final day of the trial, as the jury deliberated, many of the women in Mr McGregor’s life appeared by his side for the first time.
During the proceedings, Mr McGregor usually arrived at the Chancery Street court on foot, having been dropped off at the other side of the Four Courts Complex. But on Friday, a large chauffeur-driven Rolls Royce stopped in the middle of the street. Mr McGregor exited the car then walked around to open the door for his fiancée. They walked quickly, hand in hand, through the photographers and cameramen to court.
In the courtroom to greet them were Mr McGregor’s mother Margaret and his sister Aoife, as well as his brother-in-law Terry Kavanagh, who is married to another sister, Erin. Mr McGregor’s father Tony was there, as he had been for every day of the trial. They were accompanied by other friends and supporters.
Ms Devlin and Mr McGregor’s mother sat either side of him as he waited for the verdict to be delivered. Ms Devlin held on to his left arm comforting him. His mother held his right arm. He appeared to be stressed and was breathing deeply.
Mr McGregor put his head in his hands when the verdict was announced. But there was near silence in court. The judge had sternly warned all those present to remain calm. "I want no scenes," he said, "anyone who makes a scene will find themselves in jail."
He and his supporters seemed stunned. Some of those with him stared over at Ms Hand’s group on the other side of the small courtroom as she cried and hugged her lawyers, her partner and her mother. James Lawrence shook his friend’s hand and squeezed his shoulders. Then Mr McGregor gave a signal to those with him, and he and his entourage filed out of court.
Mr McGregor and Ms Devlin walked out again holding hands, into a huge scrum of national and international journalists. He ignored repeated questions, some of which were being broadcast live, about the jury’s verdict and whether or not he would apologise to Ms Hand. His father and a security guard cleared journalists out of the way to allow him to get back to his Rolls Royce and be driven off.
Ms Hand emerged a short time later to express her gratitude to all those who had helped her, and her relief at the verdict. She urged other victims of sexual violence to "speak up" no matter how afraid they might be and to keep fighting for justice.
After the trial, it could be reported that Ms Hand's lawyers told the judge, before the jury was sworn in, that she had to leave her home in June due to a break in by masked intruders during which her boyfriend was stabbed. Her lawyers told the court that they were not claiming Mr McGregor had anything to do with the incident but they said it "arose from supporters" of Mr McGregor. The judge had ruled this evidence was not relevant and could not be introduced in this action.
Ms Hand’s ordeal is not yet at an end.
A hearing to determine who should pay the costs of the two and a half week long trial, estimated at "well over" €1 million, is due to take place this week.Mr McGregor’s and Mr Lawrence’s posts on social media since the verdict are likely to be brought to the attention of Mr Justice Owens at that stage.
