McGregor denies setting up co-defendant to 'take the fall' for rape, court hears

Mixed Martial Arts fighter Conor McGregor arriving at the High Court on Tuesday for his second day on the witness box. Picture: Collins Courts

Did Conor McGregor get his security guards to book hotel rooms while he was on nights out so he could bring women back for sex?

“No,” he told John Gordon SC, for Nikita Hand, on his second day in the witness box. He would have hotel rooms booked so there was the option for an afterparty, or to relax, before returning to the “normal world”, he said.

The MMA star had told the court that girls had been part of the crew partying into the early hours at Krystle nightclub in Dublin City centre on December 9, 2018, with his security booking a hotel room before the club closed.

He denied only responding to messages Ms Hand had sent him because he needed a “replacement” for the girls who had then gone home.

“I was still partying away and so were they,” Mr McGregor said. “An invitation was there to go to the salon to keep partying.” 

Nikita Hand had gone out for her Christmas party the night before, and the party had ended up back in the salon where she worked. She and a colleague, from a different branch, were picked up by Mr McGregor at around 10am on that Sunday morning.

From there they collected a friend of his, James Lawrence, and went to the Beacon Hotel in south Dublin.

In Ms Hand’s words, it was in that hotel that Mr McGregor “brutally raped and battered” her.

Mr McGregor was invited to read out his own words of what happened, in a statement he gave to gardaí in January 2019, to the jury on Thursday.

This went into graphic detail on the consensual sex he says they had in that hotel room. “I remember her saying ‘fuck me, fuck me’,” Mr McGregor read out to court.  “To encourage me. She was moaning with pleasure.” 

He would later say that Ms Hand had sex with “multiple different people” that weekend and that “it’s quite clear she had sex multiple times with two different people”. Ms Hand was mere metres from the man she alleges raped her in court as he read out these words. 

Before he left the stand just before 1pm on Thursday afternoon on day seven of the civil case taken against him, Mr McGregor had plenty more to say.

A line of questioning that Mr Gordon was keen to pursue came from Mr McGregor’s own evidence to the court the previous day when he’d said he wanted “every single shred of evidence” put before the court.

Mr Gordon asked Mr McGregor why, if he wanted to be clear and transparent about what had happened, he repeatedly said “no comment” to questions posed by gardaí during his interviews.

“Beyond giving them that statement that day, you were not prepared to provide the guards with further assistance,” the barrister asked.

During his cross-examination, frequently Mr McGregor would give one-word answers to what he was asked, or would speak at length about his thoughts on the issue. His response here was an example of the latter.

“I’d go to the top of the mountain with a microphone and shout it from the hill tops,” he said. “With the seriousness of the allegation, I took [the solicitors’] advice from there on in.

It was out of my hands. It was alien to me. I didn’t know what to do. It was the first time anything like this had happened to me. 

During court proceedings, Mr McGregor was asked about cocaine use on the day, itself. Mr Gordon asked him if he came out of James Lawrence’s house with a bag of cocaine in his hand.

“No, there was cocaine present in the vehicle prior to that,” he said. It was a “small piece”, he said.

“Both girls were given cocaine in the car?,” Mr Gordon asked. “In the car, I believe so,” Mr McGregor answered.

“You had cocaine in the car as well?" 

“Correct,” he replied.

For his part, Mr Lawrence said he “did not take cocaine” and has “not taken cocaine ever in [his] life”.

Co-defendant on the stand

And what of Mr Lawrence, his co-defendant in the case?

Having gotten close playing the video game 'Call of Duty' together as teenagers, they are good friends, the court heard. It was to Mr Lawrence’s house that Mr McGregor went to having collected two women earlier that morning seeking him to accompany them to the after party.

It was both of their assertions that after Mr McGregor had consensual sex with Ms Hand and left the hotel, Mr Lawrence then also had sex with her.

They told as much to the gardaí when questioned them in January 2019. Ms Hand previously told the court that Mr Lawrence’s assertion they had consensual sex was “lies” and that she was “shocked” by this claim.

It was put to Mr McGregor that he told the gardaí Mr Lawrence had sex with her so he could be a “patsy” and “take the fall” for him.

The MMA athlete denied this and said there was no collusion between them. Asked several times whether he had paid Mr Lawrence’s legal fees, Mr McGregor said it was “quite possible” that he had.

Once McGregor had finished, Mr Lawrence stook the stand then in the afternoon.

He, too, took grave exception to the suggestion he was a patsy.

"Not in a million years,” he said. “What man would put themselves up for the rape of a woman?” 

By his account, Mr Lawrence said that he had sex with the other woman who came to the hotel, Danielle Kealey, three times that day while Mr McGregor was in the other room with Ms Hand. He had earlier asked Mr McGregor’s security to go to the shop to buy him condoms.

He said he “can remember this for a fact” that they had sex three times. Ms Kealey told the court on Wednesday that they had sex once.

Mr Lawrence said that when Mr McGregor and Ms Kealey left, Ms Hand kept trying to kiss him and flirt with him.

He said they then had sex twice in the hotel room as, in the actual court room, Ms Hand began to cry openly and was comforted by her partner as Mr Lawrence carried on with his evidence.

The trial continues.