In a chapter about the break-in, which occurred in June of 2024, months before the beginning of the civil case, Nikita tells in vivid detail how three masked intruders broke down her front door and made their way upstairs at around 3am in the morning
Nikita Hand
Nikita Hand believed her partner was being “murdered” after three masked men broke into her home and stabbed him.
Nikita, who took a civil rape case against UFC fighter Conor McGregor, speaks about the horrific break in at her then-home in Drimnagh in her powerful tell-all memoir Not The Perfect Victim.
In a chapter about the break-in, which occurred in June of 2024, months before the beginning of the civil case, Nikita tells in vivid detail how three masked intruders broke down her front door and made their way upstairs at around 3am in the morning.
The brave young mother also told how the assailants called her a “rat” and how she believed the attack was designed to “intimidate” her or worse.
Writing about the ordeal she said: “And then cutting through everything the men’s response came from outside. ‘You’re nothing but a rat.’ ‘You’re dead when we see you next time you’re dead’.”
Protecting her then 12-year-old daughter, Nikita recounts how her partner Gary fought off the attackers – who were armed with a knife.
“Thumping, struggling, shouts. The sounds of bodies hitting walls and the floor. Three men against one. I held Freya tighter. My whole body shaking. They were going to kill him. I knew they were going to kill Gary and there was nothing I could do but protect my daughter for as long as I could until help came,” she writes.
“The sounds grew louder and more violent. I felt sure they were murdering him. Then impossibly the row began to move away from us towards the stairs. Gary was somehow forcing them back.”
After Gary had managed to scare off the attackers and gardai were called by her daughter Freya, he lifted his shirt to discover the extent of his injuries.
“When he lifted his shirt to investigate the source of nagging pain he realised they had stabbed him in the stomach. We hadn’t realised the intruders had been brandishing a knife,” Nikita writes.
“He was stabbed multiple times and had scratches and other injuries on his legs and arms.
“But the deepest puncture wound was in his stomach.”
Nikita Hand speaking to the media after attending the Court of Appeal(Image: SAM BOAL/COLLINS PHOTOS)
Nikita also writes how her knuckle was “grotesquely” swollen after she had punched the wall while screaming for help. Her partner Gary, who she believes the attackers did not know was going to be there, required “nine or 10 stitches” following the incident.
“We sat together in the harsh hospital light holding hands barely speaking. What was there to say? Gary had come close to being murdered in my home,” she further writes.
But the horrific ordeal didn’t end there. Nikita tells how even after the intruders had ran out of the home, they returned to smash in her windows.
“Even after he had fought the intruders down the stairs and slammed the doors shut on them they returned with another weapon. We know they took something from the boot, a baseball bat or a crowbar to smash the double glazed front windows and the door.
“They had made a second attempt to attack us.”
Nikita, who had by that stage broken up with her previous partner ‘Ste’, says she believes the men who came to her home came specifically for her.
“To this day I believe the intruders were taken by surprise when they found Gary in the house. They had probably heard that Ste had moved out and came expecting to find me alone or with my child. So they only brought one weapon between them.
“They did not attempt to rob the house. Gary and I both believed those men had invaded my house to intimidate me or worse. We also feared that this was only the beginning,” she writes.
The attackers had used the knife to break in the lock of the front door before kicking it in, she says. The blade was ultimately found discarded in the hall, its tip broken.
“It had still been sharp enough to penetrate Gary but God knows how bad it could have been if the tip hadn’t broken off in the lock,” she writes.
Following the terrifying ordeal Nikita says she returned to the home to pick up previous photographs. But, she says, she knew she never wanted to return.
“I wasn’t coming back. I knew that with absolute certainty. This house was finished for me.”
Nikita Hand with Rosie O’Donnell at the launch of her book entitled Not the Perfect Victim, in the Irish Writers Centre
Nikita Hand spoke to Brendan O’Connor on RTE Radio 1 on Saturday morning
Speaking to a Garda detective following the incident, Nikita says she told him about her upcoming civil case against Conor McGregor. She tells how she asked the detective if he would return to the house after what had happened.
“I heard what he didn’t say. Run, we can’t protect you,” she writes.
“We left the house that day and we never lived in Drimnagh again.”
As reported by the Irish Mirror previously, the garda investigation into the break-in at Ms Hand’s former home is “effectively dead.”
Gardai made efforts to identify a vehicle believed to have been used by the gang as they escaped.
However, efforts to trace its movements have proven difficult, and the attackers have not been identified to date.
“This investigation is effectively dead. No file was sent to the DPP. No one will ever say it’s fully closed because any new piece of information could reopen it,” a source said.
Nikita’s book Not The Perfect Victim, which is published by Hachette, is in all book stores and is available on Audible now.
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