Touched by the curse of Bruce Lehrmann
Careers ended or damaged, reputations sullied, friendships destroyed — these are the casualties for many of those linked to Bruce Lehrmann’s sensation defamation case.
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The curse of the Bruce Lehrmann saga is real.
The list of people who have come into contact with Lehrmann’s court cases only to lose their jobs, have their names dragged through the media, or worse, continues to grow.
Ex-political staffer Brittany Higgins kicked it off in 2021 when she waived her right to anonymity and sat down on Network Ten’s The Project to tell Lisa Wilkinson, and the world, that she had allegedly been raped by a person (later revealed to be Lehrmann) inside Parliament House on a drunken night out two years earlier.
Few could have predicted the chain of events that would follow.
Even less would likely have predicted the bodycount that would result from the resultant court cases.
Careers have ended. Defamation cases have been launched. Reputations have been tarnished. Friends have become bitter enemies.
And we don’t even know if it is done yet.
In recent weeks, a couple of warring former mates from Network Seven blew up the case even further, landing it back on the front pages of newspapers and at the top of TV news bulletins.
Meanwhile, observers have been obsessively watching on wondering who will be next as the saga continues to collect victims.
This is the story of those who have been touched by the curse of the Bruce Lehrmann proceedings.
Brittany Higgins
Could Higgins have ever imagined the saga would unfold like this when she waived her right to anonymity and accused Bruce Lehrmann of raping her inside Parliament House in March 2019?
Higgins got millions in compensation from the Federal Government, signed a six-figure book contract and retired to France.
But she lost some skin on the way through.
Her mental health was pushed to the limit thanks to the intense public scrutiny over the rape allegations after she waived her right to remain anonymous.
On top of that, she faced a bruising cross examination during Lehrmann’s criminal trial in the ACT Supreme Court.
The first trial was aborted due to jury misconduct and the DPP decided Higgins’ mental health was in such a parlous state that it chose not to pursue a retrial.
She is also being sued for defamation by her old boss, then Minister for Defence Industry, Linda Reynolds, who claims Higgins and her finance David Sharaz waged a campaign against her. The matter is still before the courts.
Previously an ambitious political operator for the Liberal Party, Higgins said in her compensation claim that medical experts had said she would be unable to work for the next 40 years.
David Sharaz
Ms Higgins’ fiance was accused of being the puppet master who pulled the strings behind the scenes of the seemingly never-ending saga.
The former journalist and political adviser moved to France with Ms Higgins but will have to return to Australia as he is being sued for defamation by Ms Reynolds, along with his fiance.
His position as a behind-the-scenes operator has seen him fare better than Ms Higgins in the fallout stakes.
Bruce Lehrmann
Bruce Lehrmann’s public relations career has hit a hurdle since being accused of raping Ms Higgins.
He’s also been charged with raping another woman in Queensland in October 2021.
He vehemently denies both claims, and the charge relating to Ms Higgins was dropped after the trial was aborted.
That has done little to help his situation.
That’s because he launched a defamation case against Network 10 and Lisa Wilkinson, where he has been blowtorched in the witness box.
Oh, and there’s also the legal nuclear bomb set off by ex-Seven producer Taylor Auerbach, who claims in evidence to the court Lehrmann leaked confidential evidence from the case and had the cost of drugs, hookers, holidays and an expensive steak covered in exchange for agreeing to an exclusive interview.
Lehrmann was not identified when Ms Higgins first went public in 2021.
He was outed on August 7, 2021, after being punted from his job at British American Tobacco two months earlier.
Lehrmann made some attempt at image rehab by suing Channel 10 and Lisa Wilkinson for defamation.
But, win, lose or draw, the case has been damaging for Lehrmann.
Linda Reynolds
The Liberal senator has launched her own defamation case against Brittany Higgins and fiance David Sharaz and has claimed the pair colluded with Lisa Wilkinson and producer Angus Llewellyn to attack her politically.
The former defence minister launched legal action in the Supreme Court of Western Australia over a series of social media posts by the couple that she says damaged her reputation.
Ms Reynolds was Ms Higgins’ boss at the time the political staffer claimed to have been raped on a couch in the minister’s Parliament House office in 2019.
Ms Higgins later accused two of her former bosses — Ms Reynolds and fellow senator Michaelia Cash — of responding inadequately to her complaint.
Ms Reynolds also received an apology from the ACT Government and a $90,000 defamation settlement after she sued over allegations made about her by former ACT chief prosecutor Shane Drumgold SC in a letter to the Australian Federal Police.
Fiona Brown
Ms Brown, the chief of staff to Senator Linda Reynolds, was forced to justify her response to Ms Higgins’ rape allegation from the witness box in the Federal Court of Australia.
The senior political staffer feared she would be sacked after she defied Ms Reynolds’ request that she report the matter to police.
Instead, Ms Brown felt “it was morally and ethically wrong” to contact police without Ms Higgins’ consent.
She backed that up with a bombshell claim in evidence that members of then prime minister Scott Morrison’s office were “trying to protect themselves” and not Ms Higgins.
Ms Brown also gave evidence that there was “no cover up”.
She has told media the ordeal had taken its toll on her professionally and personally.
Lisa Wilkinson
The veteran journalist hasn’t been sighted much on air for Network Ten since her Logies speech about Higgins’ rape allegations.
Wilkinson won a Logie for her 2021 interview with Ms Higgins on The Project, when the former political staffer went public with her claim she was raped inside Parliament House.
But the high-profile presenter was heavily criticised for her acceptance speech.
Wilkinson praised Ms Higgins’ bravery at a time when Lehrmann’s trial had not concluded and, Mr Lehrmann’s lawyers claimed, deprived him of the right to be presumed innocent.
Lehrmann then sued Wilkinson as the second defendant in his defamation case against Ten.
Wilkinson hired her own legal team in the case but then feared she would lose her Harbourside property if Channel 10 wouldn’t pick up the $700,000 tab.
She was forced to file a cross claim against Ten to be reimbursed and the relationship has well and truly unravelled.
The Federal Court heard that Wilkinson was removed from The Project and an interview series allegedly promised by Ten management has not eventuated.
She has not returned to television.
Angus Llewellyn
A Network Ten producer on The Project’s Higgins interview, Llewellyn got served a shit sandwich spread thick during the defamation trial.
Llewellyn was grilled on the witness stand and was forced to defend his professional reputation over claims by team Lehrmann that he failed to pick up on alleged contradictory statements by Ms Higgins.
Shane Drumgold SC
Drumgold’s career and position as the ACT’s Director of Public Prosecutions imploded spectacularly over his conduct as a prosecuting barrister during Lehrmann’s rape trial.
Officially, he retired from the position in August 2023.
But there was no other option following the release of a 600-page report from an inquiry that probed his conduct on the case, among other things.
The report, by former Queensland Judge Walter Sofronoff KC, concluded Drumgold “lost objectivity” and deliberately misled the court over a note he made following a meeting with Lisa Wilkinson.
It also found that Drumgold misused legal professional privilege to avoid disclosing evidence to the defence.
The barrister had a partial win when he challenged the findings of the report.
While most of the report’s findings were upheld, Drumgold’s appeal overturned one of them.
This was a finding that Drumgold acted with “grossly unethical conduct” during his cross examination of Ms Reynolds.
Drumgold’s lawyers said he was “delighted” with the court’s decision.
Walter Sofronoff KC
Sofronoff is an ex-judge who made the findings against Drumgold, only to have the findings questioned when another judge concluded he might have been biased.
Drumgold appealed Mr Sofronoff’s findings, which saw Acting Justice Stephen Kaye find there was a “reasonable apprehension of bias” on Mr Sofronoff’s behalf.
This came after Mr Sofronoff exchanged more than 50 phone calls with journalist Janet Albrechtsen during the inquiry and also met for a private lunch.
Acting Justice Kaye concluded that Mr Sofronoff “might have been influenced by the views held and publicly expressed by Ms Albrechtsen”.
There was no adverse finding made against Mr Sofronoff.
Steve Jackson and Taylor Auerbach
Jackson was sitting pretty after being announced as NSW Police Commissioner Karen Webb’s media adviser when Auerbach launched a scorched earth attack that dragged both men into the Lehrmann saga.
The result saw Webb cut ties with Jackson and Auerbach got himself punted from an investigations job at Sky News.
Auerbach also broke Jackson’s golf clubs and posted a bizarre social media video to taunt him.
The pair had been close friends but had a Johnny Depp-Amber Heard level fall out when they worked for Channel 7’s Spotlight program.
Both worked on the show’s exclusive interview with Bruce Lehrmann.
After Jackson’s police job was announced, a media report emerged that a Seven credit card had been used to pay thousands of dollars for Thai massages for Lehrmann and others (which Jackson reportedly did not know about).
Photos featuring Jackson in the vicinity of a nude Tziporah Malkah, around the time he was interviewing the troubled ex-model for a story, were also circulated.
On Thursday, Auerbach told a court he was responsible for both and also conceded he had breached revenge porn laws over the forwarding of the photos.
Auerbach was sacked from Sky News and Lehrmann said his claim about the massages was the work of a “disgruntled” ex-Seven producer.
Auerbach then went nuclear.
He became a bombshell witness in Lehrmann’s defamation and told the court the ex-political staffer was reimbursed by Seven for drugs and prostitutes.
Auerbach also included in his affidavit a claim that Lehrmann had provided Seven with evidence from the rape trial, including thousands of private text messages sent by Ms Higgins.
Lehrmann has previously given evidence in the trial that he had not provided Seven with the material. Both Auerbach and Jackson are on the hunt for a new job.
Mark Llewellyn and Channel 7’s Spotlight
Veteran TV producer Mark Llewellyn was dragged into the drama thanks to Auerbach’s explosive affidavit that was tendered in the Federal Court.
Llewelyn, Spotlight’s executive producer, was in charge of the program’s sit-down interview program featuring Lehrmann.
Auerbach’s affidavit claimed Llewellyn’s reflection can be seen on a computer screen displaying Brittany Higgins’ personal text messages that were evidence in the rape case.
Auerbach claims Mr Lehrmann supplied the text messages in breach of court rules.
Mr Lehrmann gave evidence in the rape trial that he did not supply evidence from his case to Seven.
Spotlight was stripped of its Walkley Award nomination after it emerged in the defamation case that Seven had paid $100,000 in rent for Mr Lehrmann in exchange for exclusive interview rights.
The program’s future is reportedly now under a cloud, with Seven bosses holding crisis talks as to whether it can survive the fallout from the scandal.
Questions were raised by Ten’s legal team in court over whether Seven complied with a subpoena issued in the case for it to produce all documents relating to its dealings with Lehrmann.
On Thursday night, Seven’s commercial director Bruce McWilliam blamed Llewellyn for the network’s sub-par search of its communications with Lehrmann.
Adding to the heat, McWilliam and outgoing Seven West Media CEO James Warburton are leaving it to incoming CEO Jeff Howard to clean up the mess.
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