UFC fighter Conor McGregor was found civilly liable in 2024 for sexually assaulting a woman so violently that she needed to have her tampon surgically removed.
After a five-year-long hiatus from fighting, McGregor returned to the UFC on July 11, performing for an arena of more than 20,000 screaming fans. He lost less than two minutes into the fight.
On June 16, Jimmy Fallon brought him on to “The Tonight Show” to promote the aforementioned fight, laughing and talking with McGregor in a fluff interview that completely ignored the sexual assault.
McGregor sexually assaulted Nikita Hand in her Dublin hotel room in 2018. In 2024, an Irish court jury found him legally responsible for “assault by rape” as detailed by Hand’s barrister. He later appealed the verdict, but his appeal was dismissed in 2025. He was never charged criminally due to “insufficient evidence” failing to meet Ireland’s legal burden of proof.
When I was sexually assaulted at 16, my name was withheld from the media because I was a minor. That didn’t stop thousands of online hecklers from accusing me of lying for money or attention.
“Little girls like this are trained and queued to lie by the Me Too Movement and liberal media and ruin men’s lives” was one of the many comments that has stayed with me nearly four years later.
My assailant was a prominent chiropractor in my community, and what I learned from my experience is that the general public will most often choose to first believe a man in power over a vulnerable young woman.
Cases like McGregor’s continue to prove this worldview accurate.
I will never understand how someone can morally side with a potential rapist. Of course, there are false allegations, but false allegations make up a meager minority of sexual assault cases.
I can tell you firsthand that you have so much more to lose than to gain when coming forward about a sexual assault. There isn’t enough money or sympathy in the world that can make the re-traumatization worth it. I didn’t come forward about what happened to me because I wanted money or attention — I came forward because I didn’t want it to happen to anyone else.
I’ve utilized my minor TikTok platform to speak about topics that are important to me, one of which being the importance of believing and supporting survivors of sexual assault. I recently posted a video calling Fallon out for hosting McGregor. The video gained some traction, with many commenters agreeing McGregor should never have been brought on.
Because McGregor was technically never charged criminally, others argued that McGregor was never convicted and thus isn’t guilty. Seeing as McGregor was required to pay his victim roughly $250K in damages and that his claims were “unanimously” denied on appeal by both the appeals court and the Irish Supreme Court, it’s apparent the courts disagree with the notion that he was innocent.
Moreover, McGregor’s criminal record precedes him. The rape aside, McGregor has had multiple run-ins with the law, such as his 2019 arrest for stomping on a fan’s phone in Miami Beach. He also pleaded guilty to one misdemeanor count of disorderly conduct in a Brooklyn court after he threw a metal dolly at a bus of UFC fighters in 2018. The rape of Nikita Hand was neither the first nor the last chapter in a long history of violence.
One comment on my video argued that McGregor should be allowed to move on with his life, while admitting McGregor was obviously guilty.
“Why would the producers of this show not air him?” wrote @gebeen89 on TikTok. “Do you think he should be banished for life?”
It’s fair to argue that people change — that minor mistakes made can be repented for. But sexual assault is not a minor mistake. Sexual assault is an unforgivable crime that warrants a lifetime spent in prison, not a lifetime spent in the public eye.
Survivors are told rape allegations ruin assailants’ lives, but that isn’t true. Rape ruins lives. Rapists, more often than not, walk away free and unscathed.
Even though our legal system is unbelievably skewed against sexual assault survivors, critics of the #MeToo movement will argue that the community pushes a “guilty until proven innocent” narrative.
But that idea is unfounded, because clearly, it hardly matters when rapists are guilty, either.
More often than not, even those proven guilty receive little more than a slap on the wrist — if anything — before being tossed back into society where many of them will do it all again.
By allowing McGregor to continue his life in the limelight, society is placing him on a pedestal. By broadcasting McGregor’s supposed redemption arc to Fallon’s massive viewership, society is teaching young men watching that they can rape and get away with it, and society is teaching survivors that there’s no point in coming forward.
McGregor is a monster and should not be treated as a celebrity. Fallon is complicit in allowing him continued prominence in society. Fallon is complicit in bolstering rape culture and quieting survivors. Fallon is no better than the corrupt system that let McGregor walk free.