Brittany Higgins’ emotional evidence at odds with previous statements

At the end of three hours of gruelling evidence Brittany Higgins came off the witness box sobbing into the arms of the Ten Network’s barrister, Matt Collins KC.

Brittany Higgins leaves court flanked by her partner David Sharaz and legal team on Wednesday. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Max Mason-Hubers

Brittany Higgins came off the witness box sobbing, into the arms of the Ten Network’s barrister, Matt Collins KC, who had just taken her through an explicit account of her alleged rape by Bruce Lehrmann on a couch in Parliament House in 2019.

The young woman had been in the stand for more than three hours, giving evidence that was clearly traumatic for her but sometimes veered from the narrative she has previously presented.

Collins quietly offered reassurances as other members of her team gathered around her: her close friend, Emma Webster, her co-respondent in the defamation case, Lisa Wilkinson; and Wilkinson’s lawyer, Sue Chrysanthou SC.

Higgins’ partner, David Sharaz, was not in court for the morning session.

Lehrmann – sitting alone at the opposite end of the public gallery, as he has on every day of the trial – was still busy making notes in the black notebook he’d been writing in through much of the day.

Lisa Wilkinson with Sue Chrysanthou SC outside court. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Max Mason-Hubers

Higgins had begun her first full day in the witness box confidently, sometimes almost cheerfully.

Collins had taken her back to the time she joined then-Defence Industries minister Linda Reynolds’ office, and encountered Lehrmann for the first time.

The young staffer treated her “like his secretary”, she said, even ordering her to get the office fridge moved “because it made a humming noise”.

“I just did it, but I didn’t necessarily think it was fair or right,” she said.

At a drinks evening, Higgins said, Lehrmann had tried to kiss her outside the pub – an allegation Lehrmann has always denied.

“While I was waiting for the cab or Uber, Mr Lehrmann came up to me,” she said. “He came into my space, and he tried to kiss me on the lips,” she told Collins firmly.

On the evening of the alleged rape, a group of staffers went to the Dock Hotel and later the 88mph club, during which time Higgins’ said, she downed 11 alcoholic drinks.

Lehrmann was “the nicest he’d ever been” to her that night, she said, buying her several drinks. But he was “handsy”, she said, “touching my legs up, like my thigh, sort of area.”

By the end of the evening she was completely drunk, she said.

“I don’t think anyone else was as messy as I was.”

Higgins said she and Lehrmann left the 88mph bar together, in an Uber or a taxi, because “someone said” they lived in the same direction.

“I remember Mr Lehrmann saying something to the effect of ‘I have to just pick something up from work’, and I didn’t have all my wits about me to question it or to be curious about what he needed at work,” Higgins said.

She told the court she didn’t know why she got out of the car with Lehrmann when they arrived at Parliament House

At this point in her evidence she began sobbing.

Justice Michael Lee offered her a break, but she said she would continue.

She told the court she didn’t remember signing in at the security desk, and when shown the signature, said she didn’t recognise it.

“It’s not my writing and therefore I deduce it’s Mr Lehrmann’s writing,” she said.

At this point in the proceedings, Lehrmann rose quietly from his seat and handed his solicitor a purple post-it note, who in turn passed it up to his barrister, Steven Whybrow, at the bar table.

Bruce Lehrmann leaves Federal court at lunch. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Max Mason-Hubers

Higgins, continuing her evidence, said she remembered being in the ministerial suite but hadn’t remembered that a security guard led them there.

“I was by myself for a period of time and I didn’t know where Mr Lehrmann was,” she said. “He didn’t come back for a little while.”

Higgins gave a detailed and gruelling account of the alleged rape.

She says she woke up to Lehrmann pinning her legs open, and having sex with her on the couch.

“I remember when I woke up, there was a pain in my leg,” she said. And then: “Bruce was on top of me.”

She says Lehrmann was “in the throes” of sex when she woke up, and that she thought he was about to climax.

“I was under the impression I had been going on for like a little bit of time,” she said. “I used the expression like, I was late to the party.”

She said she couldn’t get off the couch and passed out.

Higgins told police in an interview played at the criminal trial that when she woke her dress was up around her waist.

“My dress was still on my body, but it was really scrunched up so it was around my waist,” she said in the police interview.

However, at the rape trial, the security guard who came into the office that morning gave evidence that she found Higgins “completely naked” on the sofa.

On Wednesday Higgins seemed to struggle to recall whether she was naked or half-dressed.

“My top was exposed and my bottom half was exposed,” Ms Higgins said. “I wasn’t sure where my dress was – it seemed conceivable to me that it was around my waist, but I wasn’t sure. I don’t know.”

Higgins said she was physically sick in the bathroom of Reynolds’ office.

“I made my way to the minister’s bathroom and I threw up and I sat on the floor for a while as I was sick.”

Higgins said she went home and spent the entire weekend in her bedroom, ordering Uber Eats.

On Monday when she went to work, Lehrmann bought her a coffee and put it on her desk, she said. They exchanged work related emails, one of which Lehrmann sent with a smiley face.

Brittany Higgins arrives at Federal court on Wednesday. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Max Mason-Hubers

“Suddenly, after he raped me, there was this familiarity and a smiley face that I felt was undeserved,” she said. “It really, it just gives me the heebies … it really freaked me out. And still does.”

On the Tuesday after the incident, Higgins recalled Lehrmann being called into a meeting with Reynolds’ chief of staff Fiona Brown and packing up his desk immediately after.

“I thought he had been fired,” she said.

Almost immediately after, she said, Brown called her in for a meeting.

Brown told her there had been a security breach in the office at the weekend and asked what had happened.

“It was the first time I’d vocalised it and I said that he was on top of me,” Higgins said she told Brown. “I said I was barely lucid. And it was the first time I’d disclosed the rape to someone.”

Higgins said she told Brown she had been drunk, and that she thought she had told Brown there was an “assault”.

“I didn’t use the word rape in that first meeting, it was a confronting word, but I said I was assaulted and I said he was on top of me… maybe I didn’t say assaulted … I said he was on top of me …

Prompted for the precise words used, Higgins said: “I think I said ‘assault’ because otherwise it doesn’t make sense contextually but I remember saying words to that effect.”

Higgins claimed Brown said “Oh, God” upon hearing the allegations.

Higgins’ account on Wednesday is significantly at odds with Brown’s recollection of the meeting.

Earlier this year Brown told The Australian she had asked Higgins: ‘Is everything ­all right? Has something ­happened?’”

“No, I’m responsible for what I drink and my actions,” she recalled Higgins saying. “She’d been on a night out. There was no ­allegation.”

Brown said it wasn’t until Thursday that Higgins came into her office to return a signed statement of ministerial standards, and said, just as she was walking out the door: ‘Oh, I remember him on top of me.’

“And I said, ‘What?’” Brown told The Australian. “I said, ‘Are you all right?’ And she’s just staring at me. And I said, ‘Did something happen that you didn’t want to have happen?’ ‘Would you like to make a complaint?’ And she shakes her head to say no.”

Brown said Higgins had still at that stage not said she was the victim of a sexual assault.

Brown has asked to be excused from giving evidence in the defamation trial.

Justice Lee will rule on that request next week.

Both sides will be waiting on that verdict with bated breath.