The jury in the civil action for damages taken by a woman who alleged she was raped by Conor McGregor in a Dublin hotel have been urged to decide the case on the evidence, and not on whether they may “love” or “loathe” Mr McGregor.
It is “absolutely vital” they give a verdict in accordance with the evidence, not their gut reaction or feelings or because they may not like Mr McGregor, Remy Farrell SC said in his closing speech on behalf of Mr McGregor.
Nikita Hand (35), a hair colourist, has alleged, in her action for damages, that she was sexually assaulted by Mr McGregor and by another man, James Lawrence, of Rafter’s Road, Drimnagh, in the Beacon hotel on December 9th, 2018.
Both respondents have denied her claims and have pleaded they had consensual sex with her in the hotel.
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On Tuesday, Mr Farrell said Mr McGregor is someone who is “hard to avoid”, “who elicits strong views, some love him, some do not love him”.
Mr McGregor is “not backwards in coming forwards” and some of the jury may have had negative views of him, some may actively dislike “or even loathe him”, he said.
“There is no point pretending otherwise,” he said.
The case is also not about “vindication”, he said. The jury had been told about the DPP’s decision not to prosecute and there was a suggestion the court was the only place she can get vindication, he said. The DPP’s view does not matter and nor does anyone else’s view, he said.
It may be a euphemism to say Mr McGregor has a forceful personality and there may be something in the evidence that enforces that, he said.
He had heard “an intake of breath” when Mr McGregor referred to Ms Hand and Ms Kealey as “two lovely ladies” and “somewhat bombastic” when they got into his car.
They may also wonder about his reference to himself as a “prideful” person who would not draw attention to his own defeat in a fight in October 2018, counsel said.
They may also have a view about his behaviour as a family man going into town and ending up in the hotel, counsel said. He was not asking them to like Mr McGregor or to invite him to Sunday lunch, but just to look at the evidence.
Ms Hand, he said, had told “persistent” lies and “absolute untruths” about several matters before, during and after the events in the Beacon hotel, he said.
Everyone tells lies at stages but, in this case, the “why” of the lie was more important, he said. The lies included telling her boyfriend she was going into town on December 9th, 2018, when she was going to a hotel in Sandyford.
Perhaps the single most important lie was evident from a text sent by Ms Hand at 6.28pm, after the alleged rape, to her boyfriend, saying “all great, I’m so drunk”, he said.
CCTV showed it was “happy, happy, happy” on the part of Ms Hand all the way through in the hotel, “until she knew she had to go home to face the music”. The CCTV showed Ms Hand “doing a little victory dance” in the car park after contacting her then boyfriend after Mr McGregor had left and before she returned to the hotel room with Mr Lawrence.
The question for the jury is, did Mr McGregor assault Ms Hand, in reality it’s about rape, and rape is a form of assault, Mr Farrell said.
In any case like this there is a winner and a loser, and the jury has to ignore the consequences of their decision, he told them. It is not about who they might want to see win or lose – those are questions they must put out of their mind.
The jury had been urged to consider the case as about rape and to disregard a lot of matters as “just noise”, but the CCTV, text messages from Ms Hand to her boyfriend, and other evidence, including of Danielle Kealey, who was in the hotel with Ms Hand, was not “just noise”, he said.
The question of memory is very important, he said. Ms Hand has said she remembered some things but not others.
The jury should consider whether they believe Ms Hand that she woke up after the alleged rape and she had no memory, and that it came back later, he said.
The “remarkable feature” of Ms Hand’s memory loss is that it blocked the memory not just of allegedly traumatic events but also other non-traumatic events that suggested the alleged rape did not occur.
The theory of delayed shock had been advanced by Ms Hand’s counsel in opening the case, when he said she was “full of drugs” and her apparent “state of elation” was delayed shock. The jury must consider whether that a real explanation, and when they think about it, they should look at what she remembered and what she did not.
She remembered being raped but then “unremembers” it temporarily when she woke up, he said. The jury must consider whether they could “make sense” of that. She remembered other matters, including being back up in the hotel room after the alleged rape, but there was a “black hole” in relation to whether she had sex with Mr Lawrence.
The jury have to decide whether it is probably true that Ms Hand does not remember or just says ”I can’t remember” to anything problematic, he said. Her account is “carefully curated”, he said.
If this case was about anyone but Mr McGregor, would the door of the jury room hit them on their backsides before they are on their way back out to dismiss the case, counsel concluded.
The closing speech on behalf of Mr McGregor was followed by a speech on behalf of Mr Lawrence. A speech on behalf of Ms Hand, due to start at 2pm, is to conclude the speeches.
After the closing speeches, the jury was to be charged on the law by Mr Justice Alexander Owens before sending them out to consider their verdict.
The eight men and four women were told at the outset of the case they must decide it on the civil standard of proof, the balance of probabilities.
Today, the jury was provided with an issue paper setting out the questions they will be required to answer, including whether Mr McGregor assaulted Ms Hand. They will be asked to separately decide whether Mr Lawrence assaulted Ms Hand.
The judge told jury members they would also get a list of exhibits and information, essentially the core evidence and amounts relating to Ms Hand’s loss-of-earnings claim.
The jury has heard Ms Hand, then aged 29, and work colleague Danielle Kealey, were at their work Christmas party the previous evening, had been drinking alcohol and taken cocaine, and continued partying into the morning of December 9th when they were picked up in Mr McGregor’s car at about 10.15am.
Mr McGregor and Mr Lawrence were separately partying in city centre nightclubs. Mr McGregor said he bought drinks for his group and cocaine was also available. Mr Lawrence said he had some drink but has never taken cocaine. Mr Lawrence went home at one point before agreeing to travel in Mr McGregor’s car to the Beacon hotel, arriving about 12.30pm.
CCTV footage showed Mr McGregor and Ms Kealey leaving the hotel about 6.13pm and Ms Hand and Mr Lawrence leaving about 10.30pm.
Ms Hand said in evidence she was raped by Mr McGregor in the hotel and had no memory of having sex with Mr Lawrence after Mr McGregor and Ms Kealey left.
Ms Hand was referred to the Rotunda hospital’s sexual assault unit on December 10th and made a statement to gardaí on January 9th, 2019.
The jury has heard she made no allegation against Mr Lawrence until after he provided a statement claiming he had consensual sex with her twice in the hotel after Mr McGregor had left with Ms Kealey.
Mr McGregor is back in a packed court 24 of the Four Courts today, accompanied by his father Tony. Ms Hand, accompanied by her partner, is also in court.
Closing the case for Mr Lawrence this afternoon, John Fitzgerald SC said many features of Mr McGregor’s case overlapped with his client’s, and he was adopting those.
One important difference was that Mr Farrell SC, for Mr McGregor, had set out a brief summary of Mr McGregor, who he is, and how he is known, counsel said.
Mr Lawrence is here with none of the fame, perhaps even notoriety, that Mr McGregor has, he said. Mr Lawrence has lived his 35 years “in relative obscurity”, which he would probably like to return to after this case.
Mr Lawrence is entitled to be treated absolutely equally to Mr McGregor in that neither should be tried on the basis of what they are or how the jury may feel about sexual assault cases, cocaine use, people cheating on their partners and going out for 36 hour benders, he said. They must decide the case on the evidence.
He said the jury should consider Mr Lawrence’s account of what happened in the hotel is the correct one and the one on which they should, on the balance of probabilities, decide the case.
Ms Hand’s side wanted the jury to pluck out part of what Mr Lawrence says but not the rest, to believe Mr Lawrence had sex with Ms Hand and to disbelieve she had consented to that, or was even in a position to consent, he said.
Even “more bizarrely”, they wanted the jury to find she was not in a position to consent to sex but to disagree when she said on oath she did not believe Mr Lawrence’s account, he said.
This case had come to court on the basis that Ms Hand had no recollection of Mr Lawrence having sex with her but, in her evidence, it became not just an absence of recollection but “some form of conspiracy” .
Ms Hand had said Mr Lawrence gave the guards a made-up story and was lying about having sex with her, counsel said. More surprisingly still, she said she never believed he had sex with her, it was always “a made-up story”.
Why is Mr Lawrence here, counsel asked. Mr Lawrence does not believe he did anything to Ms Hand and it is easy to understand that, he said.
On the suggestion that Mr Lawrence was some “patsy” or “fall guy”, counsel said there was a media storm about a sports star alleged to have raped a woman in a Dublin hotel before CCTV or other evidence was gathered.
The jury should ask themselves about the mindset of someone who would put themselves into that storm and risk prosecution and possibly a significant prison sentence. “Who does that?” he asked. “It was a hell of a risk to take and no one would have taken it.”
He said Ms Hand had given evidence that she had said to Mr Lawrence when they were in the hotel together after Mr McGregor had left: “Youse all put blind eyes to what Conor does to women”.
Ms Hand had said she remembered saying those precise words to Mr Lawrence, but that was followed by further periods of Ms Hand not remembering, he said.
Ms Hand’s lawyer had referred to her experiencing “delayed shock”, but what counsel says is not evidence and no evidence of that had been provided, he said.
Counsel asked the jury to consider the “consensual, conditional, agreed” nature of sex earlier that day between Mr Lawrence and Ms Kealey in the hotel, involving the use of a condom.
Counsel asked them to consider whether the CCTV from later that evening and night bore out Ms Hand’s evidence that she was not attracted to Mr Lawrence, was really, really drunk and did not know what she was doing and was not in a position to have sex.
The CCTV, at various intervals, shows Ms Hand initiates contact with Mr Lawrence, he said. This was not a situation of a man “mauling a woman”; she was initiating it, putting her arms around him, kissing him, and at one stage putting his arms around her.
The initiator of the affectionate flirtatious contact was Ms Hand, and she exhibited no signs of distress, quite the opposite, he said. That “wholly supports” Mr Lawrence’s account and was “wholly inconsistent” with Ms Hand’s account.
There was “the odd stumble”, but this was not someone with no agency or control, he said.
Ms Hand’s case against Mr Lawrence is “bizarre”, counsel said. To find against him, the jury would have to carve out part of his story and discard the evidence of Ms Hand’s demeanour which was consistent with his account of consensual sex.
Rather than engage with any of those “contortions”, the jury should accept Mr Lawrence’s evidence that Ms Hand did have sex with him consensually after Mr McGregor and Ms Kealey left the hotel about 6pm on December 9th.
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