NIKITA HAND HAS spoken in her first ever interview about the trauma she suffered at the hands of former MMA fighter Conor McGregor, after a jury found him liable for sexually assaulting her in a Dublin hotel in 2018.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Speaking to Brendan O\u2019Connor on RT\u00c9 Radio 1, Hand said that there are \u201ctwo Nikitas.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cNikita before that night had so much confidence\u2026 after that night, I lost a big huge part of my life,\u201d she said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Hand said that today she\u2019s \u201cokay\u201d.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m not going to say I\u2019m absolutely perfect, you know, I still live with the trauma of what happened to me throughout the years,\u201d she added.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The interview comes with the release of her book \u2018Not the Perfect Victim\u2019, in which she paints a graphic picture of the suffering she has endured as a result of the assault itself, and the years-long process of reporting McGregor, and eventually going through a civil case before a jury.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Speaking to O\u2019Connor, Hand explained that she knew McGregor \u201cto see\u201d from her local pub, and from growing up in the same part of Dublin.\u00a0<\/p>\n
On the night in question, she messaged him on social media after being out with a friend at an event, and he came to pick them both up in a car.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Hand explained that both women believed that they were going to \u201ca party\u201d, but that after being driven around in the car with him for a long time, they eventually went to a penthouse hotel suite.\u00a0<\/p>\n
She was candid about the fact that she was intoxicated at the time, as she\u2019d been drinking and had taken some cocaine.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Hand said she ended up in a bedroom with McGregor, and that the memory of what occurred there more fully returned to her afterwards when she saw the bruising on her arms later that night and panicked.\u00a0\n<\/p>\n
\u201cI tried to reason with him as nicely as I could, but there was no reasoning with him, you know? You know, he just wasn\u2019t taking no for an answer, and you know, he pinned me down. I tried to fight. I couldn\u2019t overpower somebody like him,\u201d she said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Hand described the sexual assault as extremely violent.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cHe choked me three times, and my fight completely gave up. I remember the third choke [that] lasted the longest, and I remember just seeing my daughter Freya\u2019s face, and surviving became bigger than you know, fighting back,\u201d she said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Asked if she thought she was going to die, Hand said: \u201cAbsolutely, yeah.\u201d<\/p>\n
The longtime hairdresser and mum of two said that after the assault she felt \u201cashamed\u201d and \u201cdirty\u201d.\u00a0<\/p>\n
She said that she was thinking,\u201dIf I had went home and didn\u2019t send him that DM? If I didn\u2019t drink so much, if I didn\u2019t take cocaine\u201d, and added that she was initially blaming herself.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Hand didn\u2019t immediately want to report the assault but said that her mother convinced her that she needed medical attention and to report the incident, and she said that in doing so, her mother \u201csaved\u201d her.\u00a0<\/p>\n
She also spoke about being \u201cdevastated\u201d when the Director of Public Prosecutions did not go forward with prosecution of the case.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cThe only way I could get my day in court was to take up a civil case,\u201d she explained.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cI just couldn\u2019t let it go,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf I had have walked away from this, I would have seen him in the newspaper, I would have seen him on TV, I would have heard about him. It would be in my face. It is in my face all the time, you know. And I just knew I wouldn\u2019t live with myself if I didn\u2019t do everything in my power to try to seek justice.\u201d<\/p>\n
She said that she was unable to work following the assault, was unable to look at herself in the mirror for a period of time, and experienced distress to the extent that she began to pull her own hair out.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Hand described the three-week trial that took place as an \u201cabsolute nightmare\u201d.\u00a0<\/p>\n
She added that winning the case has \u201chelped\u201d her, but that it hasn\u2019t taken away \u201cthe nightmares, or the anxiety, of the PTSD\u201d, as she continues to experience panic attacks to this day.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Hand said that she hopes her book will help \u201cyoung girls and boys\u201d.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cI hope it does educate people on consent. You don\u2019t have to be the perfect victim. None of us are. Humans aren\u2019t perfect. We\u2019ve all made bad decisions,\u201d she said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Hand said that she does not forgive McGregor, and she had nothing to say to him via the interview.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Speaking of her own feelings of shame, however, she said that finally, her \u201cguilt is gone\u201d.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cI know it wasn\u2019t my fault what happened to me,\u201d she said.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"NIKITA HAND HAS spoken in her first ever interview about the trauma she suffered at the hands of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":629669,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[162133,1714,615,267303,61,60,43,1717,267304,51180],"class_list":["post-629668","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ireland","tag-civil-case","tag-conor-mcgregor","tag-dublin","tag-her-story","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-news","tag-nikita-hand","tag-nikita-hand-tells-her-story","tag-sexual-assault"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/629668","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=629668"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/629668\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/629669"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=629668"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=629668"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=629668"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}