Conor McGregor subjected a woman to a “savage” attack in a Dublin hotel and is a “sly coward” who does not have the “decency” to admit what he has done, a High Court jury has been told.

There is no shortage of irrefutable evidence that Nikita Hand was held in a “hold” by Mr McGregor after which she “basically surrendered” to him in the Beacon Hotel on December 9, 2018, senior counsel John Gordon said.

The squeeze was key to Mr McGregor taking “control” of her and would be etched in her memory for the rest of her days, he said.

Ms Hand asked for medical evidence, including from a paramedic who described the bruising on her body as one of the worst he had seen, he said. Another doctor who examined her in Rotunda Hospital’s sexual assault unit the day after the alleged assault said hers was one of the worst cases he had seen and had never dealt with with a previous case in which a tampon was inserted into a woman’s vagina.

“Somebody did it, it happened in the Beacon Hotel, it’s Mr McGregor,” Mr Gordon said.

Mr McGregor subjected her to a violent attack and then tried to ‘run away’ from it, suggesting her injuries may have been caused by someone else or because she took a ‘dive’ in a hotel bathroom or was outside party for a few days, the lawyer said.

The “more lies”, the “more extravagant and outrageous” Mr McGregor’s case becomes and all this underlines the fact that the jury should vindicate and compensate Ms Hand. “You can tell reality from fiction,” he said.

Ms Hand “has to live with this for the rest of her days and will always be a marked woman for taking on Conor McGregor,” he said.

The barrister said the jury could assume that James Lawrence, whom Ms Hand sued, was “in cahoots” with Mr McGregor.

Mr Lawrence made the statement after Mr McGregor was interviewed in January 2019 by police about Ms Hand’s allegation that she had been raped by Mr McGregor, the lawyer said. Mr Lawrence had said he went to solicitors within two or three days of the alleged assault, the same solicitor as Mr McGregor. The jury heard that Mr McGregor had paid all his legal fees, the barrister said.

“So we can assume that Mr. Lawrence was in cahoots with Mr. McGregor from the beginning,” he said. Mr Lawrence “threw a hand grenade”, saying he also had sex with Ms Hand at the hotel, he said in his statement that he had “white” sex.

The word “soft” was inserted to distract Mr Lawrence from the fact that Ms Hand had been badly beaten and to confuse the narrative, to make it an “even bigger beating”, Mr Gordon said.

He was making closing arguments on behalf of Mrs Hand at the conclusion of her civil action for damages against Mr McGregor and Mr Lawrence, of Rafter’s Road, Drimnagh, over the alleged sexual assaults on her at the hotel.

Both men denied her claims and presented evidence that they had consensual sex with Ms Hand.

Closing arguments on behalf of both men were made on Tuesday, after which Mr Gordon closed the case for Ms Hand. Mr Justice Alexander Owens then proceeded to charge the jury on the law and will continue his charge on Wednesday.

In his address, Mr Gordon told the jury they had seen a lot during the eight days of evidence, a lot of “anger”, “anger”, “vitriol” and “serial lying”.

He said Mr McGregor’s barrister, Remy Farrell, had urged the jury to focus on “islands” of evidence in the case, including CCTV evidence.

This refers to evidence deemed absolutely irrefutable around which the jury will build its overall analysis of the case, Mr. Gordon said.

He said Mr Farrell had shown CCTV evidence, but while cameras don’t lie, they don’t always tell the whole story either.

He suggested, using their common sense, to the jury that it was clear Ms Hand was “not in a good shape” at the hotel.

In the middle of the case is “a cliff,” which both respondents are navigating, he said. The bottom line is that on the evening of December 9th 2018 Ms Hand was badly beaten and the best Mr McGregor’s side can come up with is that there are inconsistencies and lies about her account to her then partner, a he said.

Mr McGregor initially appeared to claim it was just fun, “athletic” sex, but changed his story and gave evidence, including that there was no tampon, he said. There was “even a slight excursion into the possibility of a third man.”

Mr McGregor had obviously thought as the case approached that there would be a problem with the pad and the severity of Ms Hand’s injuries.

The lawyer referred to Ms Hand’s first garda interview on January 5, 2019, and said she gave another interview in February after first learning that Mr Lawrence said she had had sex with him.

Meanwhile, Mr McGregor was interviewed by police and during that time was shown much of the CCTV and photographs of her injuries, the barrister said.

In an interview on 18 January 2019, Mr McGregor gave a statement in which he said he was shocked by the injuries, did not cause them and speculated that someone else had done so. At that point, Mr. McGregor, “for the first time, had to face what he did because he did it and what he did was savage,” he said.

After giving “fake” evidence for some time, at one point “the mask came off, he lost his cool” and the court witnessed “a stream of invective” directed through the courtroom at Ms Hand. “What does that say about Mr. McGregor?” he asked.

Ms Hand said in her evidence that she would not have sex while on her period and that she would not have sex with a tampon and the balance of probabilities applied, counsel said.

She had said Mr McGregor “won’t take no for an answer”.

Mr McGregor had taken her to the hotel, booked hours earlier by his driver, while he was at Krystle nightclub with friends, including two girls. The club went on until about 7am, the girls decided to go home and he drove one of them to Clontarf.

“So there it was at 7:30, apartment booked but no girls.”

That is why Ms Hand said she was surprised to hear from Mr McGregor so late, the lawyer said. “That’s because she wasn’t in the original plan, she was the replacement.”

The jury could reasonably infer that it was his intention to have sex, and that his protests about sometimes staying in hotels to rest and maybe go to the gym were “ridiculous, nonsense, absolutely poppy”.

“Thank God the jury has the good sense to realize they are being sold a chicken by this arrogant man.”

Surrounding the underlying facts is a litany of corroborative and professional evidence, all of which corroborates Ms Hand’s story and what happened to her and the effects it had on her, he said.

Her doctor had no doubt she had suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and an experienced vocational assessor said she could not return to the work she had been doing.

Dr. Ann Leader, one of the country’s leading psychiatrists involved in more than 5,000 cases, said Ms Hand suffered from PTSD. The PTSD case, a violent assault, had not been contested in court.

Mr Lawrence appeared to be convinced there was no tampon in Mr McGregor’s case, he said. Mr McGregor made a cornerstone of his evidence that there was no tampon and that must be a lie, the barrister said.

“Rather than calling Ms Hand a liar, the liar is Mr McGregor, who lacks the courage and decency to own up to what he has done,” he said. “This is the man who lives by the media, who thrives on the media, if he were a man, he would apologize to my client for what he did to him. He is not a man, he is a coward, a cunning coward, and you should treat him for what he is.”

There is a lot of corroborating evidence, Mr McGregor put her in a headlock and that she basically surrendered, she was told ‘now you know how I felt in the Octagon’, the lawyer said.

Mr McGregor agreed that two months earlier he had been beaten by his opponent in a neck hold and had to surrender and lose the fight, the lawyer said.

“You can imagine what was going through Mr. McGregor’s mind when he said that, he was in a bit of a temper and he’s taking her by storm,” the lawyer said. The idea that she had made up this story hours later was absurd.

Of course Ms Hand’s story was “all over the world”, she was in a terrible state and suffered from a fragmented memory, he said.

Whatever the jury thinks of Ms Hand’s social habits, “the one thing you know is that she has guts,” he said.

Ms Hand was bitterly disappointed when the DPP decided not to prosecute her complaints, but did not criticize the DPP. This case involved an entirely different process, but the jury will understand why she was disappointed.

It was only after this decision that she instructed the lawyers to bring this case. This was and remains her only recourse.

Mr McGregor’s side argued it was not about the claim but about compensation, but that was wrong, he said.

The abuse didn’t just happen in the hotel, it continues, he said.

The jury had previously been told to decide the case based on the evidence, and not whether they could “love” or “hate” Mr McGregor.

It is “absolutely vital” that they give a verdict in accordance with the evidence, not with their reaction or feelings or because they might not like Mr McGregor, Remy Farrell SC said in his closing speech on behalf of Mr McGregor .

Mr Farrell said Mr McGregor was someone “hard to avoid”, “causing strong opinions, some love him, some don’t”.

The case is not about “claiming” either, he said. The jury was told of the DPP’s decision not to prosecute and there was a suggestion that the court would be the only place it could get vindication, he said. The DPP’s opinion doesn’t matter and neither does anyone else’s, he said.

Ms Hand, he said, told “persistent” lies and “absolute untruths” about a number of matters before, during and after the events at the Beacon Hotel, he said.

Perhaps the most significant lie was evident in a text Ms Hand sent at 6.28pm after the alleged rape to her boyfriend, saying “I’m great, I’m so drunk…”, he said.

Closing Mr Lawrence’s case this afternoon, John Fitzgerald SC said many features of Mr McGregor’s case overlapped with his client’s.

One important difference was that Mr McGregor was well known, he said.

Mr. Lawrence is here without the fame, perhaps even the notoriety, of Mr. McGregor. Mr Lawrence lived his 35 years “in relative obscurity”, which he would probably like to return to after this case.

Mr. Lawrence has the right to be treated equally with Mr. McGregor because neither should be judged on who they are or how the jury might feel about cases of sexual assault, cocaine use, people who cheats on their partners and dating for 36 hours. benders, he said. They have to decide the case based on the evidence.