Today the civil rape case against Conor McGregor began with the sitting judge deciding to withdraw from the jury a transcript of an interview given to Gardaí in January 2019.
Judge Andrew Owens said that the transcript amounted to hearsay and urged the members of the 8 woman and 4 man jury to disregard its contents.
Cross examination of Miss Hand resumed with SC from McGregor, Remy Farrell, asking Hand why she had initially told people that the alleged rape had taken place in the Morgan Hotel when in reality she, McGregor, Danielle Kealey, and James Lawrence had gone to the Beacon Hotel in Sandyford on the night in question.
Hand reported that she had assumed that this was the case because of some of the interior decor of the hotel, in particular a bath.
Playing back a portion of CCTV where Hand could be seen on her phone in the underground parking area of the Beacon Hotel, she could be seen holding her phone.
A short time later she appeared to sit on the ground, got back up and made a “victory dance” gesture by throwing both her arms into the air in an attitude of celebration.
Using mobile phone transcripts retrieved from Gardaí, Farrell established that it was at this time, 18:28 on the 9th of December 2018 that Hand had sent her ex-partner, Ste Redmond, a message saying words to the effect that she was having a good time and was ok. She sent a message saying “I’m so drunk”
Giving evidence before the jury yesterday Hand had claimed that this message was sent to Ste after she had woken up in the hotel room after the alleged rape.
She claimed that she had woke up with Conor McGregor beside her, and worried about what time it was, had asked him for the time.
She claimed that McGregor had told her that he wouldn’t get the time from his watch as it had stopped and that the watch she was wearing was also not working.
She said that she had got out of bed, went to her bag, took her phone and sent Ste the message that it transpired was sent from the carpark.
Asked how this could possibly be the case she said that she didn’t know and that her “mind was messed up” at the time because of the alleged incident.
Asked if she had deleted messages from her phone around the time period of the alleged assault, she said that she had and that she had asked a number of others to also delete messages from their phones.
She said she did this because she was afraid and that she did not intend to press charges for this reason. “I deleted a good bit” she said adding that the Gardaí had got “some of them back”
Asked if she was happy that all the messages had been retrieved, she said she was.
When Hand was asked if she had texted her manager at the time, Eimear Brennan, that she had been raped she said she had but that she had deleted it and had asked Brennan to delete it as well.
Farrell put it to her that this message had not been retrieved by Gardaí and that if so her suggestion to the jury that all of the messages sent at the time had been retrieved was “incorrect”.
“It must be.” she conceded. “It’s six years later I can’t remember absolutely everything,” she said.
Farrell said that she was using her phone a lot during the over 30 minutes of CCTV captured from the Beacon Hotel. Hand commented that she had no memory of the time period caught on CCTV from the hotel and that she didn’t know why she was on her phone.
Judge Ownes suggested that she may have been using it to google things for example.
She agreed that before she had contacted Ste she had contacted his sister Jen, which Farrell said contradicted her earlier statements that she had contacted Ste first thing after waking up after the alleged assault.
The court heard that at 18:27 on the 9th of Dec, Hand had made a call to Conor McGregor and that this would have been after he and Danielle Kealey left the hotel, after the alleged assault would have taken place.
Farrell put it to her that she had called the man who she claims brutally raped her.
Hand said that she couldn’t remember “at all” .
Hand became visibly upset on the stand and indicated that she didn’t want to watch the CCTV again.
When Farrell asked, “Why is it hard for you to watch?” she answered, “It’s not me, it’s not my character and I don’t want to have to look at it again,”.
“It’s very disturbing for you,” he said.
Farrell asked if he could suggest to Hand that everything on the CCTV “flatly contradicts what you said,”
She categorically rejected this saying, “I know what happened to me, I was brutally raped and battered.”
That CCTV does not take away what happened to me.” she said
Hand became emotional and told the court that she needed a break.
When the court sat again at 12:10pm, Farrell put it to Hand that she had told the jury the previous day that she wasn’t “looking for sexual activity or romantic entanglement” when she met with McGregor and Lawrence.
He said that some of the CCTV “suggests you were”.
Hand again said that she couldn’t remember the CCTV from the hotel which showed her twice putting her arm around James Lawrence and kissing his face, and on another occasion also in the hotel lift with Lawrence and Healy also on board – which would have been after the alleged rape took place as it was when McGregor was leaving the hotel – kissing McGregor on his arm.
Farrell argued that seconds before she placed a kiss on the back of McGregor’s arm, she had hugged him however she argued that the CCTV did not clearly show this and rejected that view of what happened in respect to that specific point.
Hand said she could not comment on this as she had no memory of it and was therefore unable to provide evidence.
“You seemed to have romantic designs on James Lawrence,” he said with Hand conceding, “I seen that.”
Asked if this was wrong, she answered, “I don’t feel that it’s wrong because I don’t remember any of it.”
“I know it’s me in the CCTV, but it’s not my character,” she said, adding, “I’m not acting normal.”
Farrell suggested that at 23:02 when Hand contacted Jen Redmond saying “I need to speak to you”, that this was the first indication that Hand had made that something was wrong.
“I can’t remember” she said, adding, “I knew I tried to contact Jen but I can’t remember any messages I sent”
Farrell wondered why it was 30 mins after leaving the hotel that Hand seemed to remember that “something was wrong”.
“I can’t remember what I was writing In the messages,” she said.
Garda Detective Sgt Woods, who interviewed Hand in January 2018 was told that Eimear Brennan was the the first person Hand had told about the alleged rape.
“I remember being on the phone to her,” she had said
“That’s six years ago I can’t remember,” said Hand.
Farrell said that although describing herself as “drunk and vulnerable” at the time she had the wherewithal “to continue sending” Ste untruths via texts.
He said she was “sufficiently within” her “mental faculties to understand the need to lie and the ability to lie”.
He asked at what point during the approximately six hours she had spent at the hotel did she think the alleged rape had taken place and if it was earlier or later in the time frame, to this she replied, “I don’t know”.
He asked her why it had taken her so long to remember what had happened after she had woken up.
He said that in an earlier statement she had said that she was “very uncomfortable” when McGregor “started to kiss you” and asked her, “Do you remember hugging him in the lift?”
“I can’t remember every detail of the night, I was drunk and had drugs in my system,” she replied.