Lehrmann sues Ten: Reynolds allegedly tells Higgins ‘these are things women go through’ after alleged rape

Linda Reynolds allegedly told Brittany Higgins ‘these are things that women go through’ after she disclosed she was allegedly raped in Parliament House, a court has been told.

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

Linda Reynolds told Brittany Higgins “these are things that women go through” after she disclosed she was allegedly raped in Parliament House, a court has heard, with the then defence industries minister saying she didn’t think Bruce Lehrmann was “capable of this”.

Ms Higgins entered the witness box for the second time on Wednesday for the defamation trial of Mr Lehrmann, Network Ten and Lisa Wilkinson, recalling that she woke up to him pinning open her legs, having sex with her, and with him on the brink of climax.

The former Liberal Party staffer broke down in tears repeatedly while in the witness box, at one point sobbing so much her speech became incomprehensible.

During another section of evidence, when asked to hold up a floor plan of Senator Reynolds’s office for the court, her hands were seen to be physically shaking.

Ms Higgins gave the bulk of her evidence-in-chief on Wednesday, with Mr Lehrmann’s barrister Steven Whybrow SC on Thursday expected to begin picking apart her version of events from the night of the alleged rape.

Mr Lehrmann is suing Ten and presenter Wilkinson over her interview with Ms Higgins on The Project in 2021, detailing accu­sations that Mr Lehrmann had raped Ms Higgins but not naming him as the alleged attacker.

Ten and Wilkinson rely on a defence of truth, and will try to prove Mr Lehrmann sexually assaulted Ms Higgins on the couch of Senator Reynolds in Parliament House in the early hours of the morning on March 23, 2019.

Mr Lehrmann has consistently denied raping Ms Higgins.

Brittany Higgins leaves Federal Court. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Max Mason-Hubers

The Federal Court on Wednesday afternoon heard Ms Higgins was called to a meeting with Senator Reynolds and chief of staff Fiona Brown on April 1, 2019, in the office in which she was allegedly raped.

Ms Higgins gave evidence she felt “really uncomfortable” about the location of the meeting, and said it was “glaringly obvious” it should have been held somewhere else.

“It was the first time I’d been back in the room after the assault and so for me ... it just really had an impact,” she said.

Ms Higgins said during the meeting, Senator Reynolds ­apologised to her and said “these are things that women go through”.

“The minister said ‘I’m sorry’. She said ‘These are things women go through’. She said ‘If you go to the police, please keep us informed’. She said ‘I didn’t think he was capable of this’. From that, I inferred she was talking about Bruce,” Ms Higgins said.

She said she was not asked to recount the event, and she did not remember much more from the meeting.

“I was pretty traumatised being back in that room,” she said.

“I don’t remember specific words she said, other than those … four key phrases that I really held on to.”

Ms Higgins gave evidence she was “sloppy” drunk on the night of the alleged rape, and remembered taking a shot at the 88mph nightclub that was bought for her by either Mr Lehrmann or fellow Liberal staffer Austin Wenke.

Ms Higgins said she woke up on the night of the alleged rape to Mr Lehrmann pinning her legs open, and having sex with her on the couch in Senator Reynolds’s office.

She said she was “lodged” between the armrest and the back of the couch, with her head “jammed in the corner”.

“He was on top of me ... he wasn’t looking at me, he was lurched over the top of me,” she said.

“I was spread open and exposed. I had one leg open on the side of the couch and then one open, which is where his knee was in my leg.”

Ms Higgins said she believed he was about to finish, told him to stop, but said she could not scream.

“I don’t know, it was just like, trapped in my throat,” she said. “I couldn’t do it.”

She said she believed Mr Lehrmann still had his shirt on while he had sex with her, but couldn’t say for certain where her dress was.

“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.”

At Mr Lehrmann’s rape trial, the security guard who came into the office that morning gave evidence that she had found Higgins “completely naked” on the sofa.

Ms Higgins told the court on Wednesday it was a parliamentary colleague who told her a ­security guard saw her naked, days after she had reported an “assault” to Senator Reynolds’s chief of staff Fiona Brown.

She said she had been speaking with department liaison officer Christopher Payne, who said to her: “Did you know that a security guard came in during the night and found you naked?”

“I didn’t know that information before, so to me, I was shocked, I was upset,” Ms Higgins said.

“Fiona hadn’t disclosed that to me and it was the first time I really felt this massive amount of mistrust with the office because he had this information.”

Later, she said: “I was really distraught and upset that they’d been someone in the middle of the night who had found me just after I had been raped and they didn’t try and wake me up, or call for help.”

Ms Higgins admitted to giving incorrect evidence in Mr Lehrmann’s criminal trial in regards to what she did with white Kookai pencil dress that she was wearing on the night of her alleged rape.

During the criminal trial, she said she stored the dress under her bed for “a good six months” but an image emerged of her at Senator Reynolds’s birthday celebrations wearing the dress six weeks later.

Lisa Wilkinson arrives at Federal court. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Max Mason-Hubers

When asked about the confusion on Wednesday, Ms Higgins said: “I was wrong about that period of time in the criminal case. I thought it was longer than what it actually was. It was under my bed for about six weeks before I wore it one more time and then never wore it again.”

Ms Higgins said she eventually went public with her alle­gations because she could no longer “sit on it anymore”, and parliamentary staffers had already begun to find out about it.

Asked why she didn’t just go to the police, and not the media, Ms Higgins said her story was already making its way into the hands of journalists.

“At the end of 2019, there was a media inquiry that came in about the assault ... about an assault in Linda Reynolds office,” Ms Higgins said.

“And so there was already ­people sort of who knew or who peripherally somehow knew about the assault in media circles.

“People knew and it was ­handled, and it almost came up in Senate estimates.”

Ms Higgins said after allegations of impropriety were levelled at then-attorney-general Christian Porter in late 2020, she “couldn’t be silent anymore”.

“There were so many people and when it became clear it was a pattern, at that point I just couldn’t sit on it anymore,” she said.

“It made me feel sick just knowing that I was complicit in their cycle, in their cover-up, in their silence because I hadn’t called it out.”