A woman accusing renowned cage fighter Conor McGregor of raping her in a civil lawsuit in Ireland was found “very bruised” immediately after the alleged attack, a paramedic who treated her has told the High Court in Dublin.
Nikita Hand claims McGregor assaulted and raped her inside a Dublin hotel room in December 2018.
McGregor, a flamboyant mixed martial artist who was once a world champion and one of the highest paid athletes on the planet, has denied all of the accusations.
Brian Lawless / AP
“I haven’t seen someone so bruised, with that intensity of bruising,” paramedic Eithne Scully told the Irish court, according to CBS News partner network BBC News, which had a journalist in the courtroom.
Scully said Hand had a cut on her chin and bruising around her lower neck, as well as on her chest, legs, buttocks and thighs.
The jury was shown video of Hand as she was treated by Scully that showed some of her injuries, the BBC said.
The Irish High Court began hearing testimony in the civil case last week. Under Irish law, neither the accuser nor the accused has a right to anonymity in civil cases, unlike criminal prosecutions.
Irish state broadcaster RTÉ reported that Hand had previously pursued criminal charges against McGregor in 2020, but that the Director of Public Prosecutions had declined to take up the case, determining there was no reasonable prospect of convicting McGregor.
Appearing in the witness box last week, Hand said she had been at a Christmas party at a Dublin hotel in 2018, during which she drank alcohol and took cocaine with McGregor, according to RTÉ. Hand told the court that McGregor forced her down onto a bed in the penthouse suite of the hotel and that she could not breathe at the time.
She bit him, she said, and he then allegedly wrapped his arm around her neck and choked her three times. Hand told the court she thought she was going to die and would never see her daughter again.
Hand said she then let McGregor do “whatever he needed to do” so that she could survive, at which point he raped her, according to RTÉ’s account of her testimony.
Hand was accused of spreading “a web of lies” by McGregor’s defense team last week under cross-examination.
BBC News said McGregor’s lawyers accused Hand of attempting extortion with the civil case. Remy Farrell, the defense counsel for McGregor, said Hand had told her then-boyfriend in the days after the alleged attack that McGregor had threatened to kill her.
Farrell said Hand had omitted this detail in her police interviews and pressed her on whether the claim was true.
“Is that something that happened or didn’t?” Farrell asked her in court, according to the BBC. Hand told the court she could not recall if she had said that to her boyfriend at the time.
McGregor has faced previous sexual assault allegations in the United States. In October 2023, the State Attorney’s Office of Miami said it would not pursue criminal charges against McGregor after a woman accused him of attempting to force her to perform oral sex on him after an NBA finals game between Miami Heat and the Denver Nuggets.
He has also previously faced criminal charges in the U.S. for alleged assault and criminal mischief.
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