Nikita Hand says she still wakes up screaming from nightmares about the sexual assault she says Conor McGregor subjected her to in a Dublin hotel in 2018. Speaking for the first time on television since the Irish civil jury ruled in her favour, Hand described the lasting trauma of the attack and the toll of the legal process.
“I’m working on myself, I’m learning how to live with it and I’m being the best [mom] that I can be, but it’s never going to go away,” Hand told Miriam O’Callaghan on Ireland’s “Prime Time” program on Wednesday. She said she sometimes wakes “screaming the odd time” and credited her partner Gary with helping to calm her down, but said “it’s not easy.”
Hand became emotional recalling the moment of the attack. “When it started, I felt really uncomfortable,” she said. “When he got really aggressive and I was trying my best to fight, there was a bit of an anger in me as well. Then I just completely lost myself when he choked me. I lost a part of who I am and she’s still gone to this day.”
She described how after McGregor choked her a third time, “The fight in me gave up and I was just completely gone. I can’t really describe it, it was like disassociating away from your own body basically. It was like I was looking down on myself as the attack was happening.”
The civil trial ended in November 2024 with a jury awarding Hand nearly €250,000 in damages after finding McGregor had sexually assaulted her. McGregor’s appeal was unanimously rejected by a three-judge panel in July 2025, and the Supreme Court declined to hear any further appeal in December, effectively ending the legal battle.
McGregor denies any wrongdoing and has maintained his innocence throughout.
Hand had initially cooperated fully with the criminal investigation but was devastated when Ireland’s Director of Public Prosecutions decided not to prosecute McGregor in 2020. “I was in shock, I was in complete shock,” she said. “I felt like I told the truth. I gave my statement. I went to the SATU (Sexual Assault Treatment Unit). I handed over my phone. I got the swabs. I did everything I needed to do. I did everything correctly and I just automatically thought they would come back and say yes, but they didn’t.”
The decision not to charge McGregor criminally caused Hand’s mental health to deteriorate. “I hit the drink pretty bad. I used to drink every night to numb the pain. I couldn’t sleep at night. That was a very difficult time and a very dark time in my life.”
Hand also recounted the distress of facing McGregor in court. She said she suffered a panic attack on the first day of the civil trial and struggled throughout, at times doubting she could continue.
When the verdict was announced, Hand described being overwhelmed. “I actually didn’t know what was happening, to be honest with you,” she said. “The room, I couldn’t hear anything. I was in a complete state, I was shaking from top to bottom. I didn’t know what was going to happen. I had to look at Cliona, the lady from the Dublin Rape Crisis Centre, and say, ‘What’s happening here?’ She [said], ‘Nikita, you won, they believed you.’ I couldn’t believe it.”
She said she was happy but “still deeply traumatized from the whole trial itself.”
Hand spoke about the difficulty of seeing McGregor maintain a high profile in the months after the verdict. “It’s very hard to know that he was given such a high platform still to this day, for such a vicious attack that he did on me,” she said. She referred to his visits to the U.S. White House and appearances on American talk shows ahead of UFC 329 in July.
To cope, Hand said she avoids social media and even local shops where news coverage is present. “Unfortunately, he is a famous person and there’s no way for me to get away from that.”
She also addressed the stigma victims face. “I’m not the perfect victim and I never portrayed myself to be,” she said. “But when [a woman] is raped and she’s not perfect, she seems to get blamed. I want all the victims out there to know that it doesn’t matter how much you drink, it doesn't matter if you take a drug that night, it doesn’t matter what you’re wearing or what you look like — no means no and consent needs to be taken more seriously.”
Hand hopes her story encourages others to come forward. “I’d like victims to look at my story and read my story and believe that they can come forward and get justice.”
According to Yahoo Sports.
