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Higgins denies going public with rape allegation to influence election
By Michaela Whitbourn
Former federal Liberal political staffer Brittany Higgins has denied that she went public with an allegation she was raped by a colleague in Parliament House to affect the 2022 election, insisting her claims were not about the Liberal Party but the treatment of women in politics.
During cross-examination in Sydney on Friday in Lehrmann’s Federal Court defamation case against Network Ten and journalist Lisa Wilkinson, Higgins was asked why she participated in interviews in 2021 with Ten and News Corp to air an allegation she was raped in 2019 by her then-colleague Bruce Lehrmann. He was not named by the media outlets and has denied the allegation.
Brittany Higgins arrives at the Federal Court in Sydney on Friday. Credit: Steven Siewert
Asked by Lehrmann’s barrister, Steven Whybrow, SC, if she went public in February 2021 to try to affect the outcome of the federal election in May 2022, Higgins said: “No. I was a Liberal through and through, since I was born.
“I had no intention of impacting the election, but I did want to change the culture in Parliament House.
“I was angry at the way my rape had been handled, but I didn’t think that anything I said would be consequential enough to impact the election. I didn’t have that big of an ego.”
She said she was “still a Liberal … for a really long time” but was “no longer”.
“It was not about the Liberal Party. It was about women in politics,” she said.
Higgins is giving evidence for Ten and Wilkinson as part of their defence to the defamation suit brought against them by Lehrmann over an interview with Higgins, aired on The Project on February 15, 2021, that he claims wrongly accuses him of raping Higgins in 2019 in the office of their then-boss and defence industry minister Linda Reynolds. Higgins will return to the witness box on Tuesday.
The white dress
A photo of Brittany Higgins and Senator Linda Reynolds taken on May 16, 2019, showing her wearing the white dress she wore on the night of her alleged rape on March 23 that year.
Earlier on Friday, Higgins was asked about her “thought processes” when she chose to wear the white cocktail dress she wore on the night she alleges she was raped by Lehrmann to a function on May 16, 2019, six weeks after the alleged sexual assault on March 23.
Higgins said it was her favourite dress and “I used to wear it all the time”. She agreed she had washed it since the alleged assault.
“I guess I was trying to reclaim it,” she said. The court heard she wore the dress to a birthday party for Reynolds in Perth.
“I never wore it after this event,” Higgins said. “I thought maybe I could disassociate it from the rape, but I never could.”
Lehrmann’s employment in Reynolds’ office was formally terminated on April 5, 2019, for accessing the Parliament House office out of hours on the night of the alleged rape. He was not sacked over the alleged assault.
Whybrow put to Higgins on Friday that she texted photos of herself wearing the dress to a former boyfriend “because you hadn’t been sexually assaulted in that dress”.
“You’re incorrect,” Higgins said.
Higgins has previously told the Federal Court that she was wrong when she gave evidence in Lehrmann’s ACT criminal trial for sexual assault that she kept the dress unwashed under her bed for six months. She conceded during the criminal trial that she was wrong about the period of time.
Lisa Wilkinson and Sue Chrysanthou, SC, outside the Federal Court in Sydney on Friday.Credit: Steven Siewert
“It was under my bed for about six weeks before I wore it one more time and then never wore it again,” Higgins said during the defamation case.
Lehrmann’s criminal trial was aborted in October last year due to juror misconduct and the charge against Lehrmann was later dropped altogether amid concerns about Higgins’ mental health.
The bruise photo
Higgins was questioned at length this week about a photo of a bruise that she says was taken days after the alleged assault. She has told the court she believed when she gave a photo of the bruise to Ten that the injury was caused by Lehrmann, but she now conceded it may have been caused by tripping up the stairs that night.
A photo tendered in court in Bruce Lehrmann’s defamation trial of what Brittany Higgins has described as a bruise on her leg.
Higgins rejected a suggestion on Friday that she sent a screenshot of the photo to Ten in January 2021 rather than the original so that it wouldn’t have metadata revealing when it was taken. She said she “didn’t realise it wasn’t the original” when she gave it to Ten.
Justice Michael Lee asked: “What happened to the original photograph?”
Higgins said she had changed devices when she left politics and “I think it’s just been lost”.
“I thought it was safe on my WhatsApp. I didn’t realise that not everything was backing up,” she said. She said she did not believe anybody from Ten had asked to see the original photograph, but “I don’t think anyone realised it was a screenshot”.
‘Not villains’
Higgins said on Friday she did not regard Reynolds and her then chief of staff Fiona Brown as “villains in this story”, although she did not think they did the right thing by her.
She said Reynolds avoided her after the alleged assault and in her view “did not meet her duty of care”, but Brown was “just following instructions ... and I’ve never blamed her and I don’t blame her”.
Higgins also told the court she had “adored” Senator Michaelia Cash, for whom she worked after she left Reynolds’ office, but now viewed their interactions “in a different light”. Cash has maintained she did not know about the sexual assault allegation until 2021, but Higgins said she was aware from 2019.
The timeline
The court heard on Friday that a timeline Higgins prepared about the alleged events was circulated either by her or her now-fiance David Sharaz to press gallery journalists after the News Corp story and Ten broadcast, which did not name Lehrmann.
Bruce Lehrmann arrives at court on Friday for his defamation case against Network Ten and Lisa Wilkinson.Credit: Steven Siewert
Higgins said the timeline mistakenly included Lehrmann’s name, which was “meant to be redacted”. She said the document was “for me and the police originally, it was never meant for journalists”, but it was given to them after she received a series of media inquiries.
Lehrmann denies sexual assault
Lehrmann has insisted the alleged assault “did not happen” and the pair had no sexual contact.
If the court finds Lehrmann was identified by The Project broadcast, which did not name him, Ten and Wilkinson are seeking to rely in part on a truth defence and prove to the civil standard – on the balance of probabilities – that Lehrmann raped Higgins.
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