A woman accusing Conor McGregor of sexually assaulting her in a Dublin hotel in 2018 testified in an Irish court on Tuesday at the start of a civil case seeking financial damages against the mixed martial arts star.
McGregor attended the High Court in Dublin for the beginning of a case expected to last around two weeks. The alleged incident occurred on December 9, 2018, and the civil action was filed in 2021. McGregor and another man, James Lawrence, are the defendants.
A spokesperson for McGregor has previously denied the allegations, stating that the Irish police had investigated and declined to bring criminal charges.
In her testimony, the woman recounted her discomfort when left alone with McGregor in a bedroom in the penthouse suite of a Dublin hotel, according to Britain’s PA news agency. “I tried to talk him around, that I didn’t want to have sex and wasn’t there for anything like that,” she said in the courtroom. “He just wasn’t taking no for an answer.”
John Gordon, the lawyer representing the woman, explained that she and McGregor were familiar with each other as they were from the same age group, the same area, had mutual friends, and had been in contact at various times through social media.
Daniel Keane, a gynecologist and forensic examiner in sexual assault cases, also testified on the first day of the case. Keane described the woman being “shaking and crying” when she arrived at the hospital by ambulance the day after the alleged assault. He detailed extensive bruising on her body and characterized its extent as “quite unusual.”
PA reported that McGregor’s lawyers will argue that the interaction between him and the woman was consensual. It was not immediately clear when they would present their arguments.
