Conor McGregor’s fiancée Dee Devlin is showing that she is standing by the UFC star for better and for worse after a series of sex assault allegations were made against him.
She accompanied McGregor’s to court in Dublin on Friday, where her partner was told he must pay the woman who accused him of raping her in a hotel six years ago €250,000.
McGregor, 36, faced an accusation that he ‘brutally raped and battered’ Nikita Hand, 35, at a hotel in south Dublin in December 2018.
The MMA fighter previously told the court he had consensual sex with Ms Hand, also known as Nikita Ni Laimhin, at the Beacon Hotel. He denied causing bruising to the plaintiff.
McGregor has vowed to appeal the decision, saying he was disappointed’ and ‘focused on my future’ with his family after the jury of eight women and four men found him liable of assaulting Ms Hand and awarded Ms Hand nearly €250,000.
When McGregor left the court, Devlin held his hand and faced reporters at this side.
She is, perhaps, an old hand at dealing with controversies, as it’s not the first scandal that has reared its head during their relationship.
The MMA fighter and Devlin have been together since 2008 and became engaged in 2020, although they are yet to get married.
Throughout their 16 years together, since McGregor met her at a nightclub, there have been multiple allegations of sexual assault against the ‘Notorious’ – twice in 2019 in the Irishman’s homeland, once in 2020 in Corsica, France.
McGregor was also accused to attacking a woman on a yacht in Ibiza, Spain in 2023. He was also accused of raping a woman in the toilet at the NBA Finals in Miami, Florida, last year. McGregor has denied the allegations.
In the case involving Nikita Hand, she alleged that McGregor sexually assaulted her on December 9, 2018, and that another man, James Lawrence, did the same, Ireland’s high court heard over two weeks of evidence.
Ms Hand said that she and a friend made contact with McGregor, who she knew, after a work Christmas party.
She said they were driven by McGregor to a party in a penthouse room of a south Dublin hotel where drugs and alcohol were consumed.
She said McGregor took her a bedroom in the penthouse and sexually assaulted her.
Ms Hand’s lawyer, John Gordon, said she was on antidepressants, and ‘full of drugs’ at the time of the alleged assault.
The total amount of damages awarded to Ms Hand by the jury was €248,603.60 (£206,621.91).
Nikita Hand said outside the court that she hoped her case will remind victims of assault to keep ‘pushing forward for justice’, and show her daughter, Freya, ‘that you can stand up for yourself if something happens to you no matter who the person is and justice will be served’.
When McGregor and Devlin left the court, they put on a show of unity, which comes just less than a year after the couple welcomed their fourth child.
The pair, who met in Dublin in 2008 when McGregor was just 19, live together with their children – Conor Jr., seven, Croia Mairead, five, Rian, three and Mack, nearly one, – in Las Vegas.
In 2023, a woman claimed that McGregor allegedly forced her to perform oral sex on him and attempted to sodomize her after an NBA game.
In a statement, a spokesman for Miami Police Department said at the time: ‘MPD’s Special Victims Unit is investigating a report that was filed Sunday, June 11, 2023.’
The accuser’s attorney said her client met McGregor at the NBA Finals game the night of the incident.
According to the legal demand letters issued to not just McGregor’s attorney but also the Heat and the stadium, the woman was on her way out of the building when McGregor’s security summoned her to the VIP men’s restroom.
‘After the game, and after Mr. McGregor sent the Miami Heat mascot Burnie to the hospital, Mr. McGregor elevated his aggressive, unprovoked, and outrageous behavior by violently sexually assaulting and battering this firm’s client in the men’s bathroom of the Kaseya Center,’ it read.
‘Mr. McGregor then appeared from inside the handicapped stall and shoved his tongue in the victim’s mouth and aggressively kissed her,’ according to the legal letter.
The woman’s attorney says she then told him she needed to use the bathroom.
While she was in the stall, she says McGregor ‘pulled out his penis and shoved it down the throat of the victim’.
She claims she was able to get him off her, but says he then spat on her and on himself ‘in a desperate attempt to get his flaccid penis hard.’
She claims she then tried to flee, but says McGregor ‘aggressively grabbed her, pinned her up against the wall’ and tried to anally rape her.
‘Fortunately, Mr. McGregor’s penis was too limp for complete penetration, and the victim continuously elbowed Mr. McGregor and finally escaped,’ according to the letter.
Days later, she handed over the clothes she was wearing at the time, claiming they prove he ‘spat’ on her during the alleged ordeal.
Later video emerged of McGregor appearing to lead his accuser into the bathroom and shows his entourage of security guarding the door while they were allegedly inside.
His attorneys say the footage undermines the woman’s original allegation that he and his security guards forced her into the restroom.
‘The claimant’s lawyer now has changed her story. Mr. McGregor welcomes the investigation, which he firmly believes will show the claims against him are false.
‘After not responding to the demand for money made by the claimant’s counsel, she turned to the media to apply pressure. This is no more than a shakedown,’ McGregor’s attorney, Barbara R. Llanes, said in a statement.
Other footage also surfaced allegedly filmed after the incident in which McGregor and his accuser are seen together in a club.
According to the woman’s attorney, Ariel Mitchell, that video shows her client and McGregor were ‘visibly awkwardly interacting with each other.’
She claims this was a stark contrast to how they were interacting prior to the bathroom encounter.
‘My client has always stated that there would be video of before and after, and in those videos she emphasized that the difference in the interactions between them would be visibly noticeable,’ Mitchell said in a statement to TMZ Sports.
‘This again is another video that supports what my client has been saying and supports what she told the police since the inception of this incident.’
In early 2019, reports emerged that McGregor was under investigation by Irish law enforcement for an alleged sexual assault of a woman in a Dublin hotel the previous December.
In October 2019, police received another complaint against McGregor from a woman who said he had sexually assaulted her in a car outside a Dublin pub.
The UFC fighter denied the claim and prosecutors have not pursued legal action over the 2019 complaint.
In September 2020, McGregor was detained and questioned by authorities on the French island of Corsica in September 2020 for alleged indecent exposure and sexual assault in a bar, spending two days in custody.
Eight months later, they declared a lack of sufficient evidence to justify a criminal prosecution. The investigation is said to have included DNA collection that corroborated his version of events.
‘Things are going well,’ McGregor said of his family life. ‘We’ve also got another on the way. There’s a lot going on,’ he said during a TV appearance in Ireland last year.
Devlin has not yet said anything publicly about the allegations facing the father of her children.