Six missed calls, mystery bank records and CCTV: Inside bombshell Lehrmann judgment

Between 2.16am and 2.18am on Saturday, March 23, 2019, Bruce Lehrmann’s phone buzzed insistently in the Parliament House office where he worked for then-defence industry minister Linda Reynolds. He did not answer.

The 23-year-old Liberal adviser missed six calls from his then-girlfriend, who was awake in the couple’s apartment in the Canberra suburb of Barton, just minutes from Capital Hill.

Lehrmann had been drinking for five hours with colleagues and had returned to the office after 1.30am with his 24-year-old colleague, Brittany Higgins. She was heavily intoxicated. He was not.

“There is no record of Mr Lehrmann telling his girlfriend of his plans,” Federal Court Justice Michael Lee said in a decision on Monday.

In his historic judgment, Lee made a chilling finding that the former staffer has resisted for years: Lehrmann raped Higgins “around, or shortly after” the missed calls. By 2.34am, Lehrmann had left Parliament House alone.

These are the judge’s findings about what happened that night. Lee found Network Ten and Lisa Wilkinson had successfully defended Lehrmann’s defamation suit over an interview with Higgins by proving on the balance of probabilities that the now 28-year-old raped Higgins on Reynolds’ couch.

The Dock, Kingston Foreshore

CCTV footage shows Higgins and Lehrmann arriving separately at The Dock, a pub on the shore of Lake Burley Griffin, between 7.18pm and 8.39pm to meet a larger group of Canberra staffers. Lehrmann was with his friend, Austin Wenke, a media adviser to then-home affairs minister Peter Dutton.

The Dock at Kingston Foreshore.Credit: Alex Ellinghausen

The judge said Lehrmann’s evidence that his interactions with Higgins at The Dock were “minimal” and “professional and cordial” was “a serious distortion of their dealings”.

“Contrary to his evidence, he did spend most of the evening with Ms Higgins and, as the night wore on, was aware of her drinking and, towards the end of the evening, was encouraging her to drink well beyond the bounds of sobriety,” he said.

Lee found Higgins consumed 10 spirit-based drinks at The Dock in the four hours between 7.25pm and 11.50pm, in addition to a glass of wine at home before 7pm. It took the total to 11 drinks in five hours. She had almost no food.

Brittany Higgins appears to take a photo of a colleague’s drink at The Dock on March 22, 2019.Credit: Federal Court of Australia

8.51pm

The court heard Higgins met a Bumble date at The Dock. Lee found she “abandoned her date” after Lehrmann arrived, “as she preferred to go and sit at the same table” as him. She had claimed her date had been bullied by the group, but eventually conceded in court that “I did ignore my date, and I was really rude”.

9.34pm

CCTV and other documents showed that “about 9.35pm, Mr Lehrmann handed over a card in payment of a $42.50 charge for a round of drinks”, Lee said, one of which was a drink for Higgins. However, in a significant lacuna in the financial evidence, Lehrmann produced bank records to the court showing he spent just $16 in a lone transaction at The Dock.

Bruce Lehrmann’s bank records, tendered in the Federal Court, show he spent $16 at The Dock on March 22, 2019, but the court heard he must have had another source of funds.Credit: Federal Court of Australia

“Mr Lehrmann did not say he may have had access to other funds but could not now recall – he repeatedly denied it,” Lee said.

“Despite his persistent representations to both the [Australian Federal Police] and this court that he only had access to the cards in respect of which he provided statements, it is evident this was untrue.”

It leaves an unanswered question about how Lehrmann paid for the drinks.

10.08pm

“Ms Higgins was sufficiently affected [by alcohol] ... that the CCTV shows her losing her balance and stepping backwards to maintain balance,” the judge said. Lee concluded that, by this stage, she had had seven drinks, including the glass of wine at home, and was buying an eighth.

10.34pm

Lee said that his “close review” of the CCTV, which showed Lehrmann corralling three drinks in front of Higgins, “has not allowed me to conclude that in doing so he said ‘All hers, all hers’” to another staffer to signal that the drinks were for Higgins. This had been suggested by Tim Reedy, an expert lip-reader called by Ten to give evidence in the case.

Bruce Lehrmann places three drinks in front of Brittany Higgins at The Dock.Credit: Federal Court of Australia

“Mr Reedy was an impressive and accomplished man who did his best to assist the court but, in the end, there is no need for me to form definitive views about his evidence,” Lee said.

“[Whatever] was said, I am amply satisfied from viewings of the video that Mr Lehrmann was, by his actions, encouraging Ms Higgins not to let the collected drinks go to waste and encouraging further consumption by her (with Ms Higgins playfully resisting the suggestion she drink them by patting Mr Lehrmann on the shoulder).”

11.10pm

Lehrmann bought Higgins another drink. Lee found this was her tenth that night.

11.50pm

Higgins “picked up and skolled another drink”, her eleventh of the evening. Lee said it was “notably the sixth spirit-based drink which Mr Lehrmann had observed Ms Higgins consume since his arrival” and “it is clear that Mr Lehrmann had again actively encouraged her to consume the drink”.

He had no doubt that Lehrmann “must have been aware that a woman of Ms Higgins’ stature consuming this much alcohol was likely to have become significantly inebriated”. Lehrmann and Higgins left the venue together.

Lehrmann and Higgins leaving The Dock on March 22, 2019.Credit: Federal Court of Australia

88mph, Hobart Place

Higgins, Lehrmann, Wenke and a then-Defence Department media adviser, Lauren Gain, kicked on to 1980s-themed Canberra nightclub 88mph.

In a pop culture aside, Lee said that “one might speculate the owner was an aficionado of the popular 1985 film, Back to the Future, where Marty McFly (Michael J. Fox) travels in a DeLorean time machine from the 1950s back to the 1980s at that speed”.

Canberra nightclub 88mph.Credit: Alex Ellinghausen

Lee said it was “highly likely that Ms Higgins had at least two and possibly more shots at 88mph”.

Gain sent a Telegram message to army major Nikita Irvine, an aide-de-camp to Reynolds, the next day, which said Higgins had “hooked up” with Lehrmann, by which she meant a passionate kiss. Gain told the court that she had witnessed the pair being “quite touchy with one another” and Higgins “taking selfies of the two of them”. Lee accepted that evidence.

Lee stressed the importance of the “independent evidence” of Gain and Irvine. He noted CCTV from The Dock showed Higgins took photos at the venue and Gain’s evidence that Higgins took selfies at 88mph. The Australian Federal Police did not find those images when they accessed Higgins’ phone in May 2021 after she proceeded with a complaint.

He said Higgins “was drunk and had been drunk for some time and, for whatever combination of reasons, she had not only not rebuffed the advances of Mr Lehrmann, but had reciprocated”. He found Higgins had also fallen over at the club and Lehrmann “helped her to her feet and back into the seating booth”.

“It must have been obvious to anyone that had seen (and been a party to) this incident that alcohol consumption had decreased Ms Higgins’ motor co-ordination, and … she was seriously inebriated.”

Parliament House

About 1.30am, Higgins and Lehrmann shared an Uber to Parliament House.

Lee said that “regardless of whether there was ever any settled initial plan to share an Uber home, at some stage, and with the acquiescence of the inebriated Ms Higgins, the plan became for the Uber to go to Parliament House following what Mr Lehrmann had said about whisky”.

Bruce Lehrmann and Brittany Higgins took an Uber to Parliament House in the early hours of March 23, 2019.Credit: Alex Ellinghausen

The judge was referring to evidence given by Irvine that Higgins had told her days after the rape that “Bruce and I were in [an] Uber to go home, and he wanted to come back to Parliament House. He had some whisky to show me or something”.

Lee rejected Lehrmann’s evidence that he had returned to Parliament House to collect the keys to his apartment and that Higgins had said she, too, needed to return to the office.

Lee said it was “difficult to tell” how keen Higgins was to decamp to Parliament House.

“But even if she found the prospect a tad unwelcome, going back was understandable, as like many professionals the subject of an advance by a work colleague with more power, Ms Higgins did not want to alienate someone she perceived could be of real importance to her career.”

1.42am

Lehrmann signed Higgins in.

The visitor pass register signed by Bruce Lehrmann.Credit: Federal Court of Australia

“Bizarrely, Mr Lehrmann denied signing the register on behalf of Ms Higgins, but accepted that at no point is Ms Higgins recorded as bending down to write anything on the visitor pass register. One does not need the assistance of an expert to be confident the handwriting in the register is the same for both relevant entries,” Lee said.

1.44am

Higgins and Lehrmann walked through security and Higgins removed her shoes after they set off a metal detector.

“[As] anyone with the life experience of being in pubs frequently would readily understand, drunk people are often able to compose themselves for a fleeting or short interaction and it is often difficult to form an immediate and accurate view as to the extent of intoxication of a person with whom one has not had any extended contact,” Lee said.

1.46am

Higgins struggled to put her shoes back on and gave up.

CCTV footage from Parliament House showing a barefoot and intoxicated Brittany Higgins staring at the ceiling.Credit: Federal Court of Australia

1.47am

Lehrmann and Higgins were taken to the ministerial suite by a security guard. The judge rejected Lehrmann’s account that he worked on question time briefs after finding his keys at his desk.

1.48am

Higgins and Lehrmann were alone inside the suite and “it led, on any view of it, to trouble”, Lee said.

2.16am - 2.18am

Lehrmann missed six calls from his then-girlfriend. The judge found Lehrmann raped Higgins on the couch in Reynolds’ office and was indifferent to whether she was consenting.

Lee said Higgins’ “evidence that she was not fully aware of her surroundings but then suddenly became aware of Mr Lehrmann on top of her, at which time he was performing the sexual act, when given orally before me, struck me forcefully as being credible and as having the ring of truth”.

2.20am

The judge noted a document in evidence showed AFP Assistant Commissioner Leanne Close made a note on Thursday, April 4, 2019, that she had received “info that alleged victim may have been drugged”.

“[It] is of such a speculative nature to have no probative value,” Lee said. “No other suggestion of this type has been made in the evidence and no party has made submissions about this topic. In these circumstances, I ought to give it no weight and put it ... out of my mind.”

2.31am

Lehrmann booked an Uber.

2.34am

Lehrmann left Parliament House alone.

Lehrmann captured on CCTV leaving Parliament House alone in the early hours of March 23, 2019.Credit: Federal Court of Australia

4.15am

Security guard Nikola Anderson did a welfare check in Reynolds’ suite and found Higgins naked on the couch in the minister’s office with her dress on the floor. She recorded the incident in her notebook.

10.01am

Higgins left Parliament House.

‘Behaved disgracefully’

The judge found Lehrmann had behaved disgracefully in promoting a false narrative of the evening for years.

Lehrmann’s ACT Supreme Court trial for Higgins’ sexual assault was aborted in 2022 owing to juror misconduct, and he did not stand trial for a second time due to concerns about Higgins’ mental health. He has always maintained his innocence.

Lee concluded that “the instructions he gave his trial lawyers about no contact and a lack of sex were given because he knew the admission of sex with a drunk woman would mean the possibility of her lack of consent was brought squarely into issue and he feared the truth”.

“Having escaped the lions’ den, Mr Lehrmann made the mistake of going back for his hat,” Lee remarked, in a now well-cited reference to the former Liberal staffer’s decision to initiate what became a de facto sexual assault trial months after his criminal trial collapsed.

“It follows Ms Higgins has been proven to be a victim of sexual assault.”

Bruce Lehrmann leaving the Federal Court in Sydney on Monday after his defamation defeat.Credit: Kate Geraghty