‘He choked me three times:’ The harrowing tape of Nikita Hand telling her boyfriend that she was allegedly raped by MMA star Conor McGregor

Nikita Hand cried as she told her boyfriend she couldn’t name the man who raped her because “he’ll fucking kill me.”

Ms Hand, 35, a hair colourist and mother-of-one from Drimnagh, Dublin, has accused both MMA star Conor McGregor and another man, James Lawrence, of raping her in the penthouse suite of a hotel in the capital when she was drunk and on cocaine.

Both men deny the accusation and claim the sex was consensual in December 2018, the day after the alleged victim’s Christmas party.

A harrowing recording of her 2am conversation was played in the High Court during the third day of Ms Hand’s civil case against Mr McGregor.

In it, her boyfriend tells her, “This is not a ‘shut up and don’t say anything’ situation. This s*** doesn’t happen anymore. This thing about keeping quiet about things isn’t fucking going on.”

He also said he was concerned about the “other girls” she told him she was with.

During Ms Hand’s cross-examination, Mr McGregor’s lawyer, Remy Farrell, said he was going to play an audio recording made by her then partner Stephen Redmond after Ms Hand returned home.

On the recording, Ms Hand could be heard sobbing and in a very distressed state as she told her boyfriend that she had been raped.

She also cried on the witness stand as the tape was played in court, holding her head in her hands and shielding her face with her hair.

On the audio, she was heard saying in a hushed voice, “I told him no. I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry.’

Her partner responded, “Just tell me what happened.” Say something.’

Mrs Hand is heard replying: ‘In the Morgan… in the penthouse. He strangled me. I can’t tell you who it was yet.’

The court heard she thought she was at the Morgan Hotel in Temple Bar when she was actually at the Beacon in Sandyford.

She said she was with some girls from the salon, but declined to say whose apartment she was in.

‘I can’t tell you who it was. He’ll fucking kill me,” she said.

Mr. Redmond replied, “Nikita, you’ll have to.”

“I can’t,” she said. “He told me he was going to kill me.”

Mr Redmond said: ‘Look at me… I’m not giving up.’

Ms Hand told him that she had gone to her salon manager Emer’s house before returning home, and that she had told Emer who had raped her, and that Emer had taken pictures of her body. Mr. Redmond insisted, “You have to tell me where you went.”

She replied, ‘I don’t want to. I’m scared.’

He said, ‘Nothing’s going to happen.’

She replied, “It is. He told me he was going to kill me,” later adding, “I’m sorry. It’s not my fault. It’s not my fault.’

Mr Redmond said: ‘You want to tell me you were raped.’ He asked who she was meeting in town.

“No please, I can’t face it,” she replied.

He continued, “I’m going to call the guards.”

“Don’t do that, please,” said Mrs. Hand. ‘Just watch out for me. I’ll take care of it.’

Mr Redmond responded: “This is not a ‘shut up and don’t say anything’ situation. This s*** doesn’t happen anymore. This thing about keeping quiet about things isn’t fucking going on.”

He asks if the girls she was with are still in town.

“How do you know if something is going to happen to them?” he asked.

She told him they had gone home. He replied, “I want to know where you were tonight. Stop leaving out details and changing things. I want to know where you were.’

Mrs. Hand told him that she had gone into town from the drawing-room at 1 p.m. and gone straight to an apartment in the Morgan.

“So you’re there all day?” he asked, again asking who she was with.

“I can’t tell you who, Steve,” Mrs. Hand said. “He warned me.”

Her friend replied, “I don’t care who warned you or threatened you, I just want to know where you were.”

He continued, “Listen to me for a moment. You go to sleep, you wake up and you only remember half of what you did and that’s a big damn problem.

‘You are clearly very drunk… Please tell me what happened. I beg you, I’m your guy.’

He said he was trying to find out what happened and who brought her to the penthouse.

“How do you think I feel now?” Ms Hand is heard to respond.

“Look at my knuckles fighting back. He strangled me and I couldn’t breathe. He strangled me three times.

‘Just be there for me. Who cares who it was. It doesn’t matter. He still hurt me.”

She told Mr Redmond that two men were present.

She said: ‘I was there for a party and coke and drinks. That’s why I was there.’

“It doesn’t sound like a party,” he replied.

Later in the recording, he asked why she couldn’t tell him when she had told Emer.

“Emer isn’t going to say anything,” Mrs. Hand replied. ‘You will. You will tell the nation.”

She also told him, “I’m after being sexually assaulted…I’m after being raped and all you care about is you. Wrapping your arms around me and asking if I’m okay is what you should be doing.”

You also hear her ask: ‘Why me? Why me? Why me?’

Mr. Redmond told her, “We have to do something about this,” and, “This is not being kept secret.”

Earlier in cross-examination, Mr Farrell had said he would put his client’s version of events to Ms Hand, some of which he warned could be ‘offensive and disturbing’.

He asked her if she remembered Mr McGregor chatting and ‘flirting’ with her friend Danielle. She said she couldn’t remember.

“Was James talking to her?” he asked. “I have no idea,” she replied.

Mr Farrell continued: ‘So I’m going to suggest to you that you and Mr McGregor started kissing and at this point he had the belt on his jeans open because he was going to the toilet.’

Ms. Hand replied, “I don’t agree.”

Mr Farrell said: ‘You took off most of your own clothes and he took off his and you were both sexually aroused… You started giving Mr McGregor oral sex and then proceeded to have sex on the bed.’

Mrs. Hand said, “No,” and, “I disagree.”

Mr Farrell said Danielle and Mr Lawrence were having sex at the same time, and that at one point Ms Hand came in and was ‘messing around and hitting them’.

‘That’s disgusting. “I disagree,” she replied.

She also denied describing the sex she allegedly had with Mr McGregor.

‘No. None of this is true…This seems like a made-up story,” she said.

Meanwhile, Judge Alexander Owens has told the jury that correspondence between Nikita Hand and the Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP), which was shown to them on Wednesday, should not be considered as evidence.

The letters explain why the DPP did not pursue criminal charges against Conor McGregor and James Lawrence following Ms Hand’s rape allegation.

Judge Owens said: ‘You are here to decide the evidence you will hear in court.

“The DPP’s opinion is about as useful as mine or my judicial assistant’s, which is to say: totally useless. So you can forget the DPP’s opinion and the reasons for that opinion. They have nothing to do with the process. If we wanted to do it that way, we would have a jury of five DPPs with their files in front of them.”

He said the DPP’s opinion was not evidence as to the potential unreliability of the witness, Ms Hand, and was instead only for the jury to indicate that Ms Hand had not attempted to take her own civil action before she heard that the criminal case would not take place. continue.

“It is only relevant to the applicant’s state of mind, and whether she is in fact a chancery and whether she has gone to a lawyer to defend herself or is involved in an attempt,” he said.

The process continues.