DUBLIN (AP) — A woman who accuses Conor McGregor of sexually assaulting her at a Dublin hotel in 2018 testified in an Irish court Tuesday at the start of a civil lawsuit seeking financial damages against the mixed martial arts star.

McGregor was in the High Court in Dublin for the start of a trial expected to last about two weeks.

The alleged incident occurred on December 9, 2018, and the civil lawsuit was filed in 2021. The defendants are McGregor and another man, James Lawrence.

McGregor’s spokesman He has previously denied the allegationsHe said Irish police had launched an investigation and declined to press charges.

Britain’s PA news agency reported that the woman testified that she told McGregor that she did not feel comfortable after being left alone in a bedroom with him in a Dublin hotel’s penthouse suite.

“I tried to explain that I didn’t want to have sex with him and that I wasn’t there for that,” the woman said of McGregor in the courtroom. “He wouldn’t take no for an answer.”

The woman’s lawyer, John Gordon, said that she and McGregor knew each other because they were in the same age group, from the same area, had mutual friends and had been in contact at various times through social media.

Daniel Keane, who works as a gynecologist as well as a forensic expert in sexual assault cases, also testified on the first day of the trial. The day after the alleged attack at the hospital where she worked, Keane said the woman was “shaking and crying” after being brought in by ambulance. He described in detail the bruises on the woman’s body and said the extent of it was “quite unusual”.

PA reports that McGregor’s lawyers will argue that the act between him and the woman was consensual. It is not yet clear when they will present their arguments.

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