A jury in a civil court has found Conor McGregor raped a woman in a Dublin hotel in 2018 – and has awarded her damages.
The Irish mixed martial arts fighter, 36, previously told Dublin’s High Court he had consensual sex with the woman in a penthouse at the Beacon Hotel in December 2018.
The woman alleged McGregor pinned her to a bed, choked her three times and “brutally raped and battered” her.
The civil court jury was told she was left with extensive injuries, including purple and blue bruising along her hands and wrists, a bloodied scratch to her breast and tenderness to her neck.
But lawyers for the fighter contested the allegations and accused her of attempted “extortion”.
They pointed to CCTV footage of the woman arriving at and leaving the hotel with McGregor and a second man, James Lawrence, whom she also accused of sexual assault.
Both McGregor and Lawrence denied any wrongdoing. While she won her case against McGregor, the woman lost her claim against Lawrence.
On Monday, McGregor’s legal team also told jurors it did not matter if they did not like or even loathed the famous fighter, urging them to look at the evidence and not his character.
McGregor and the claimant knew each other and had occasionally been in contact on social media, the civil trial heard.
Before the alleged assault, the woman contacted the fighter, who picked up her and a friend in his car.
McGregor “came on to her”, but she did not want to have sexual intercourse with him as she was on her period, the trial heard.
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