Brittany Higgins case: The moments that mattered in the rape trial of Bruce Lehrmann

Brittany Higgins

A young, female federal parliamentary staffer in her dream job – placed in a nightmare after a drunken night out with colleagues.

Brittany Higgins alleged she was raped in the very seat of Australian democracy. On a couch in a minister’s office. By the accused Bruce Lehrmann – who vehemently denied the allegation.

A trial already fought in the court of public opinion. But inside the ACT Supreme Court was where the opposing accounts would truly be tested, before a jury tasked with deciding who was telling the truth.

The allegations

March 22, 2019. Ms Higgins is a media adviser to minister Steve Ciobo. Mr Lehrmann is a political adviser to WA senator Linda Reynolds. The pair are said to have a “strange adversarial relationship” within the halls of power. But at The Dock, and then the 88mph bar, that night, that relationship had thawed.

Drinks were flowing, particularly for Ms Higgins. “As drunk as she’d ever been in her life,” was how Director of Public Prosecutions Shane Drumgold described it to the jury. And that fact, he said, was key to “absence of her consent and the accused’s recklessness towards it”.

At 1.40am, the pair arrived at Parliament. Security guards said she was highly intoxicated, with grass stains down her dress and unable to even put her shoes on. But the pair still walked into Minister Reynolds’ office.

Around 20 minutes later, Mr Lehrmann left in a hurry. When security checked on Ms Higgins, she was naked, asleep on the couch.

Mr Drumgold said Ms Higgins was raped, by Mr Lehrmann, on that couch. And texts she sent in the days following, backed up that allegation.

“I was barely lucid, I don’t feel like it was consensual at all,” she wrote. “If he thought it was OK why did he just leave me there like that?”

The defence

Mr Lehrmann’s barrister Steven Whybrow told the jury a trial by media had already been run – and that trial had been told just one side of the story.

“The Australian public has been sold a pup on this story, there’s a story out there that isn’t true,” he told the court.

“This was a story whose time had come.

“Never let the truth get in the way of a good story -- this case is the epitome of this phrase,” he told the court.

“This unstoppable snowball began rolling down the mountain, becoming an avalanche that could not be stopped by something as mundane as -- in this particular case -- that the allegations were not true.

“I suggest to you that what Ms Higgins said happened didn’t happen.” And that meant, the court said, that Ms Higgins’ reliability and credibility would need to be tested.

The testimony

On day one, witness one was Brittany Mae Higgins. Dressed in blue, she sat in a room away from the court. And first watched herself being questioned by Australian Federal police.

That recorded interview took place after interviews given to The Project and news.com.au. So the police had an idea of what Ms Higgins was about to say. The snowball was already rolling.

She told police by the time she arrived at Minister Reynolds’ office, she felt sick. The next thing she remembers was being woken up by a pain in her leg, and a body on top of her – and inside her.

“I remember being on the couch as he was raping me, I felt like he was almost finished … I felt like it had been going on for a while,” she was recorded telling officers.

“He had his knee on my thigh … I couldn’t get him off me.

“As soon as I came to I was crying because I couldn’t get up,” she said. “I was crying through the entire process … I said no at least half a dozen times.”

She told how during a election campaign trip to Perth, she took a pregnancy test.

CCTV of the moment the pair passed through parliament house security brought Ms Higgins to tears. Taking to the witness stand, Ms Higgins and Ms Lehrmann came face to face for the first time.

And Ms Higgins then explained how she “waded in” to disclosing the alleged rape in the days after she said it happened.

“I already knew it, in and of myself, but I hadn’t vocalised it yet,” she told the court. And when she did, Ms Higgins said the politics kicked in.

“I was really cognisant of all the party implications all the way through. Because of the pressure I was feeling I made it hard for myself … it was so stupid.

“But I loved my party, I loved the Liberal party. It sounds absurd. I didn’t necessarily want to hurt them. I wanted to reform this issue.”

The cross examination

Ms Higgins was wearing a white dress on the night she says was raped. And questioning from Mr Whybrow also elicited from the young woman not on trial that she was not wearing underwear that night.

Chief Justice Lucy McCallum warned there was a limit to where cross-examination should go. My Whybrow took it to various places.

He questioned Ms Higgins about her arrangements to reveal her story in the media – particularly with journalist Lisa Wilkinson, and $325,000 book offer brokered for her by Wilkinson’s husband Peter Fitzsimons.

He quizzed her on the dress, and her claims that she had kept it unwashed for six months – pointing to photos of her wearing it again.

And he drilled down into doctor’s appointments Ms Higgins didn’t have.

“It was to bolster your false suggestion that something happened with Mr Lehrmann,” Mr Whybrow said.

“Nothing you’re saying right now is true whatsoever, and it’s deeply insulting,” Ms Higgins said.

“I don’t know if you’ve ever gone through a trauma before but confronting it with professionals is a very hard thing to do,” she told the barrister. I completely reject everything you’re saying.”

The absence

And then, nothing public. For a while.

Mr Drumgold announced that Ms Higgins would be unavailable to continue her evidence for few days. And to protect the trial while allowing it to continue, the evidence was suppressed from public consumption.

As was the “publication of any reasons or speculation as to the reasons for the unavailability of the witness”.

“We propose to deal with that by calling some other witnesses but the prosecutor needs a bit of time.”

The witnesses

Eventually, it could be revealed that time was spent with more than 20 witnesses, including political staffers, security guards, AFP officer – and Ms Higgins’ mother.

“Brittany became very distant. Brittany became very quiet,” Kelly Higgins told the court.

“Physically I noticed from her photos I noticed from her appearance she had changed also. “She’d lost a lot of weight. She got quite thin. She just looked quite broken.”

Also called was cleaner Carlos Ramos, who remembered how he was contacted on the night after the alleged rape to complete and out-of-hours cleane of Senator Reynolds parliamentary suite.

“You need to look for something like a party, like condoms or something like that,” he said his boss told him.

And then Ms Higgins returned, to suggestions from Mr Whybrow had said “what you felt was necessary” to keep her job.

“I’m not a monster. I would never do something like that,” she said.

“Nothing was fine after what you did to me – nothing!” she exclaimed, pointing across the room at Mr Lehrmann.

The closings

Two sides to a sensational story.

On one telling, an emotionally fragile victim of a sex assault also dealing with the political forces swirling around her. But also, said Mr Drumgold, an “inherently credible witness”.

“Ms Higgins didn’t seem to embellish her account of rape at all,” Mr Drumgold said. “This is a young woman doing her best to genuinely recount some very traumatic events that occurred to her.”

On another, told by defence barrister Mr Whybrow, Ms Higgins was “quite the actor”.

“There’s a lot of issues you could consider in relation to Ms Higgins’ evidence in terms of what you might deem to be manipulation of evidence, or deception, or lies, or being less than frank,” he said.

“We have these things called con artists because demeanour is difficult to pick sometimes.”

“She says things that superficially support her position and then they turn out to be not reliable.”

“The person (Higgins) bringing the allegation is prepared to say anything.”

The judge

With no option for a trial by judge alone in the ACT, Justice McCallum had no choice but to address the elephant in the courtroom – repeatedly.

“You will have seen the number of journalists in the courtroom each day,” McCallum told the jury during her summing up. “They’re practically hanging from the rafters.”

And so she warned firmly against worry of what the reaction to a verdict might be.

“You are not answerable to public opinion, whichever way it might sway,” she said.

And as deliberations continued, so did the judge’s reassurance.

“There is no rush, no time limit.”

The jury

On Thursday morning, the jury — eight women and four men — were discharged and the trial aborted.

Justice McCallum said a juror accessed an article about the prevalence and reasons of false sexual assault complaints.

“The juror confirmed the article,” she said. “The subject matter in the article was indeed sexual assault.

“That material has entered the jury room which ought not to have.”

Justice McCallum said that it was with “regret” that she ruled a mistrial.

“I have heard an explanation and it may be that no harm has been done but that is not a risk I can take,” she said.

“It is beyond question that the conduct of the jury is as such to abort the trial.

“Both counsel ... agree with my decision in that respect.

“It should go without saying that this is both an unexpected and an unfortunate outcome in this trial.”

New trial

A new trial is now expected to follow, with Mr Lehrmann ordered to front court in February 2023.