Andrew Bolt: Activists, journalists have destroyed Brittany Higgins

The activists and journalists who exploited Brittany Higgins’ rape allegations have destroyed both her and the man she accused.

The activists who exploited Brittany Higgins’ rape allegations have destroyed both her and the man she accused.

From the day Higgins announced she’d been raped by Liberal colleague Bruce Lehrmann in the defence minister’s office, I knew this would end badly.

Why tell all this to News Corp journalist Samantha Maiden and Channel 10’s Lisa Wilkinson before she’d laid a complaint with the police?

Why name herself when rape victims can stay anonymous? Why seek publicity before asking police for justice?

Then, as journalists and activists turned her into their Hero Victim, I realised justice would never be done. These people didn’t seem to care about a fair trial.

Only evil could come from it, and Higgins today is in hospital, apparently so traumatised that experts fear for her life if there’s another trial to find the truth.

Lehrmann also considered killing himself and is scared he’ll never get another job.

Both have been betrayed because no court now will ever decide if Higgins really was raped in 2019 in Parliament House after a drunken night out (her story) or whether no sex occurred and Lehrmann left the drunk woman to sleep (his story).

See, the ACT Director of Public Prosecutions said on Friday he’d dropped the prosecution because Higgins might die if he didn’t.

Lisa Wilkinson quickly adopted Higgins her prime-time exhibit. Picture: Supplied

Perhaps that’s even true, although other lurid allegations in this case turned out false, unfortunately for Higgins.

At first, it was easy for her to give speeches about her alleged rape and the supposedly toxic culture in Prime Minister Scott Morrison’s parliament.

Many journalists and activists loved her. They wanted to smash Morrison. To find “proof” women were victims. To be crusaders.

Higgins became a cult figure of the Left, and I fear it went to her head.

Wilkinson quickly adopted Higgins her prime-time exhibit and her husband, columnist Peter FitzSimons, negotiated a $325,000 deal for a book Higgins started writing before she spoke to police.

An anti-Morrison women’s rally outside parliament had her speak, in virginal white, and the National Press Club had Higgins preach on the mistreatment of women like her.

It became such a political sin to doubt Higgins that even Morrison treated Lehrmann as guilty: “I am sorry to Ms Higgins for the terrible things that took place here.”

Then, just a week before the trial, judges of Australia’s top television awards gave Wilkinson a Logie for her interview, and Wilkinson told viewers she believed Higgins.

That infuriated Chief Justice Lucy McCallum, who delayed the trial for three months in the (hopeless) hope the jury wouldn’t be influenced by the media barracking.

“The distinction between an allegation and a finding of guilt has been completely obliterated,” she complained.

Correct. The media Left hasn’t learned from the campaign to smear the innocent Cardinal George Pell as a paedophile. Nor, perhaps, have prosecutors.

Brittany Higgins outside Magistrates Court in Canberra. Picture: Gary Ramage

The Australian reports the most senior police officer on this case thought there was insufficient evidence to prosecute Lehrmann but couldn’t stop the Director of Public Prosecutions from going ahead because “there is too much political interference”.

Sure enough, holes opened in Higgins’ evidence once the trial started.

For instance, she’d first refused to give her phone to detectives. She’d falsely told her boss she’d seen a doctor about the rape, and also that she’d had a panic attack in a bathroom when she’d actually gone to a lunch.

There was more, and the cross examination of Higgins unusually had to be paused for several days. We’re told because she was hospitalised.

Then, when the first trial was aborted five weeks ago with the jury deadlocked, Higgins disobeyed the judge’s order to shut up to allow a fair retrial in February.

She instead told the media she’d been raped, Lehrmann was shifty and the legal system had failed her. She seemed to have decided to bail out of a second trial, a victim again.

I’m not saying she wasn’t raped. I’m saying only Higgins and Lehrmann could know the truth, and a court cannot jail a man on mere suspicion.

I’m also saying that by first playing this case out in public, Higgins invited the giddy mob, not a jury, to judge her. Not all judged kindly.

Yet for many activists and journalists, this case wasn’t about the facts but their feelings. Not about evidence but their cause.

They used Higgins to posture and play politics. But when she stepped from their media stage and into the court, the rules changed – and she was broken.

Lehrmann was already destroyed, and the witch-hunters now look for someone else to beat bloody with their Logies.