Bruce Lehrmann trial: Key moments in 12 days of shock court testimony
The 12-day trial saw cabinet ministers grilled on the stand as well as revelations of secret recordings and a $325,000 book deal.
Secret recordings of cabinet ministers, a $325,000 book deal and accusations of false allegations. The 12 days of proceedings in the trial of Bruce Lehrmann, accused of raping Brittany Higgins, have delivered a series of revelations
Here are some of the key moments.
Higgins addresses Lehrmann in court
A defiant Ms Higgins addressed Mr Lehrmann directly during her final day in the witness box on October 15, telling him: “Nothing was fine after what you did to me.”
When defence barrister Steven Whybrow put it to Ms Higgins that her primary concern was losing her “dream job” working in Parliament House and said she was embarrassed after being found naked, she replied: “I’m not a monster.”
“I cared about my job but I would never do that,” she said.
When Mr Whybrow said Mr Lehrmann never went into the minister’s office, Ms Higgins said through angry tears: “He was in there. He was physically violating me. He was in my body, I know.”
$325,000 book deal
Nine columnist Peter FitzSimons, the husband of Lisa Wilkinson, secured a $325,000 book deal for Ms Higgins within a day, about a month after Ms Higgins went public with her allegations.
Ms Higgins said FitzSimons had approached her at an event and offered to act as her agent. He brought her a six-figure offer the following day. Ms Higgins completed her first interview with police on February 24, 2021.
The Project meeting
On January 27 she had travelled to Sydney with her partner David Sharaz to meet a producer from The Project and host Wilkinson.
In audio from that meeting played to court on October 6, Mr Sharaz said Ms Higgins wanted a report about her experience to be made public at the start of a parliamentary sitting week to force the Morrison government to answer questions. “That’s why Britt’s picked that timeline,” he said.
Ms Higgins said her and her boyfriend’s views did not always align on political matters but she agreed with him about the timing of the news report because as a media professional “you would naturally drop a story at the start of a sitting week”.
Rape claim ‘made up’
Mr Whybrow accused Ms Higgins of fabricating the rape allegation during her third day in the witness box. During a combative cross-examination, Mr Whybrow attacked Ms Higgins’ credibility and put it to her she did not visit a doctor in the days after the alleged rape because it didn’t happen.
“The reason you didn’t go to a doctor is because you hadn’t had sex with anybody on the Friday night, consensual or otherwise,” Mr Whybrow said.
Ms Higgins said the reason she didn’t disclose the alleged assault immediately was because “it took me more than three days to process my rape”.
Bruise photo
Ms Higgins said she took a photograph of a bruise on her left leg that was caused by Mr Lehrmann’s knee pinning her thigh against the outside edge of a couch in Senator Linda Reynolds’ office.
Prosecutor Shane Drumgold asked Ms Higgins to stand and point to where the bruise had been.
“It looks like in that photo that it’s taken on this leg but when I was assaulted I was pinned down on this leg so it looks like the bruise is more so on this side than this side,” Ms Higgins said.
When Mr Drumgold asked if Ms Higgins accepted the photo was of her right leg, she replied: “It does. It shows that (right) leg, yes.”
Secret recordings
Ms Higgins admitted she secretly recorded her then boss Michaelia Cash and sent it to a friend. She also admitted recording the then minister’s chief-of-staff, Daniel Try, to corroborate her story for a journalist.
Ms Higgins said she was gripped by an “unfounded fear” she would lose the recordings at the time and was sending them to as many people as possible.
On her second day in the witness box, she said she recorded Senator Cash on February 6, 2021, and sent the audio to friend Emma Webster, who now works as a PR consultant. “I was trying to give them to as many people as possible to have them just so that they existed, because it’s my word against a cabinet minister’s,” Ms Higgins said. “The disparity between those two powers is ridiculous and so I was trying to give it to as many friends, just to be like, ‘Please can you hold on to this for me’?”
Ms Higgins said she later gave the recordings to the AFP.
Reynolds’ texts
Senator Reynolds, under cross-examination by Mr Drumgold, said she asked defence counsel for a transcript of proceedings while Ms Higgins was in the witness box on October 6 because she was “curious”.
Senator Reynolds told the court on October 18 she knew through media reports Ms Higgins was being cross-examined on October 6 when she texted one of Mr Lehrmann’s lawyers asking: “Hi, do you have the daily transcripts?”
“I was curious to know what had been said but I was advised by my lawyer that that wasn’t appropriate,” she said.
The court heard one minute after the first text, Senator Reynolds again messaged the defence to say messages between Ms Higgins and Nicole Hamer – who worked with Mr Lehrmann and Ms Higgins in her office – would be “revealing”.
“I knew that Brittany and Nicky were friends and I thought they (texts) might be able to shed some light on the matter,” she said, adding she hadn’t seen the messages herself. The former defence minister said she had not realised that as a witness it was inappropriate to text lawyers acting in the trial. She said her partner had sat in the courtroom when Ms Higgins gave evidence but they did not discuss the trial afterwards.
Political suicide: Cash
Senator Cash told the court on October 18 it would be “political suicide” to try to cover up an alleged rape between staffers. She said she didn’t understand how there was a political connection to Ms Higgins’ allegations and that she believed what happened in Senator Reynolds’ office was a security breach.
Senator Cash, under cross-examination by Mr Drumgold, said she learned of the assault allegations days after Ms Higgins resigned on February 5, 2019, and first heard the word “rape” in a media inquiry on February 12.
Senator Cash told the court she did not understand how allegations of sexual assault made by Ms Higgins could be politically embarrassing. “I just don’t understand a political connection to this,” she said.
Asked if she was familiar with the term “plausible deniability”, Senator Cash said: “You’d need to put it into context.” When Senator Cash was asked by Mr Whybrow if it would be “political suicide” to try to cover up a sexual assault between staff, she replied “correct”.
“Hence my confusion with the previous line of questioning,” Senator Cash said.
Alleged fumbled kiss
Ms Higgins told the court on October 5 Mr Lehrmann tried to kiss her as they left work drinks at the Kingston Hotel in Canberra about a week after she started working for Senator Reynolds.
“I rebuffed the kiss mostly out of shock – I wasn’t anticipating it,” Ms Higgins said. “We didn’t have an exchange after the attempt. I think he was embarrassed.”
The dossier
Ms Higgins said Mr Sharaz gave a dossier and timeline she’d compiled for the AFP to two journalists when she was passed out on Valium. “I was pretty out of it because I was taking a lot of Valium at that point in time, because I wasn’t coping, and my partner made a decision that he will very freely say that he regrets,” she said. The court heard the material quickly spread throughout the press gallery.
Ms Higgins later said she’d given the material to a journalist on the day the story dropped on February 15, 2021.
Phone material deleted
The court heard police repeatedly asked Ms Higgins to provide them with her mobile phone between February and May, 2021, and that before finally doing so she had “scrubbed” it of “all of the horrible parts of my life”.
On October 7 she admitted deleting material from her phone, including photographs of her and Senator Reynolds.
“My phone is my life,” she said. “I didn’t want to have to scroll through my camera roll every day and see her (Senator Reynolds).”
The court heard a message Ms Higgins sent to her former partner Ben Dillaway was missing. It said: “I’m not interested in pursuing it (a formal complaint) but it’s all beyond strange.”
White dress
The court heard Ms Higgins initially told AFP investigators in February 2021 that she kept the white dress she had been wearing at the time of the alleged rape in a plastic bag under her bed for six months. Ms Higgins was then shown a photograph of her wearing the dress eight weeks after the alleged assault.
“I was wrong (about how long it was there),” she said.
“I made a mistake … I left it under my bed for a period of time, and I was wrong about that time.”
Ms Higgins later admitted she made incorrect statements about the dress; when she had a panic attack about the alleged assault; and the circumstances of her father visiting after the incident.
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