Judge in Nikita Hand v Conor McGregor civil case gave consensual masterclass – The Irish Times

Remy Farrell SC, a lawyer with precise and sometimes vivid language, used a phrase to describe his client that may have been unfortunate Conor McGregor in his final summary to the jury in Nikita Hand’s civil damages lawsuit against mixed martial arts fighter.

He told them that saying McGregor had a “strong personality” might be a euphemism.

That certainly wasn’t his intention, but that word – strong – conjured up images he’d rather avoid. Photos of Nikita Hand, fully clothed and forcibly pinned to the bed by McGregor. Or Nikita holding hands while McGregor taunted, “Now you know how I felt in the Octagon.” Or Nikita Hand “huddled” in the ambulance, “very nervous and worried,” in the words of the advanced paramedic who treated her for McGregor’s strong personality. Nikita Hand in the sexual assault unit at the Rotunda, having had a tampon removed from deep within her vagina using forceps, pressed there by a man with a strong personality. Nikita Hand deletes the messages from her phone and is reluctant to tell her then-boyfriend who did this to her because she was afraid of how someone with McGregor’s strong personality would react.

Nikita Hand listened in court as McGregor tried to portray her as someone “full of lies” who had “repeated sexual relationships with multiple people.” Hand brought a civil case against McGregor for damages for assault arising from the alleged rape only after the Director of Public Prosecutions decided not to prosecute McGregor. Yet, as her lawyer John Gordon SC put it, she was portrayed as a “gold digger and a fraudster”.

( ‘I Know What Happened in That Room’: The Full Story of the Conor McGregor CaseOpens in a new window )

The High Court the jury awarded her damages of €248,603. It established that she was not attacked by McGregor’s friend James Lawrence, against whom she also sought damages. Lawrence told gardai he had consensual sex with her, but she stated she had no memory of anything that happened between them and believed it was a “made up story”.

McGregor has already said he intends to appeal.

“Resolute” wasn’t the only word that marred several days of often graphic, disturbing testimony. At times there was a disturbing sense that the two sides were not only offering completely opposing narratives, but were speaking completely different languages.

In his testimony, McGregor interchanged words such as “party” and “joy” in a way that had no connection with their normal meaning. “Partying,” as it turned out, meant traveling around Dublin with a pre-booked hotel suite for sex and desperately trying to find someone to have it with. For a woman – or ‘wonderful lady’ – to show ‘joy’ and ‘enthusiasm’, it seemed like she could do anything, including physically fighting him. He painted a picture of a world shaped like porn: a world where sex is a chip that he can cash in whenever he wants, where women are interchangeable commodities and other men are ciphers who create numbers and bear witness to what he described as his “athletic” gender .

When the young women he was partying with at Krystle’s nightclub wisely decided to go home, he began messaging Hand on Instagram. After meeting her and another woman, the three rang James Lawrence’s home in Drimnagh. “I had two girls, two loud women full of energy, and I had to balance it out and throw a party.” Lawrence had no intention of going at first – he wanted to stay home and rest, he had a girlfriend, he wasn’t even wearing shoes – but words were exchanged and soon he too found himself in McGregor’s large car with tinted windows, being driven to the Beacon Hotel.

The events that followed were repeated – sometimes verbatim – ad nauseum throughout the 12 days in court. They don’t need to be spelled out again here. They drank and “partyed” and at some point, when Hand tried to take things further, Hand stopped agreeing to it. McGregor didn’t stop.

The jury was forced to wade through the gray area between consent and non-consent, through conflicting accounts and confusing testimony. The words of Judge Alexander Owens as he guided them through the task should be printed and posted in the bathrooms of nightclubs and high schools. It’s a masterclass on consent, as useful as a primer on rape myths as anything I’ve ever read.

Surrender is not consent – there is no need to prove that someone resisted, tried to escape or raised the alarm, he said. “You should be careful about what you think about what a person who has been a victim of sexual violence should do. This does not mean that they will complain to the person about what happened; they may react to the event in a way that may seem irrational.”

Posting a photo on Instagram “is not an invitation to be sexually harassed.” And just because a woman engages in risky activities like drinking or taking drugs “doesn’t mean she wants to have sex.”

Hand won the civil case, but her lawyer was wrong about one thing. As he said in his summary, “she will always be a marked woman because she stood up to Conor McGregor.” I disagree. Like Gisèle Pelicot, like Hazel Behan, like Lavinia KerwickHand joins the army of women who have put shame where it belongs. It will not be marked in the public eye; will be remembered as a brave woman who did not give up and – when she felt let down by the justice system – pursued her case in civil courts, incurring incalculable risks and costs. Ultimately, it wasn’t Conor McGregor who showed the world what it means to be a fighter. It was Nikita’s Hand.