Lehrmann trial: Conflicting accounts of a fateful night in Canberra
What started as a typical Friday night among Canberra’s political staffers became the subject of claim and counter-claim during the Lehrmann trial.
Was the night of March 22 and morning of March 23, 2019, an innocuous outing with workmates, as Bruce Lehrmann says? Or was it the night Brittany Higgins was raped?
A jury in Canberra has failed to decide and a new trial will be held next year.
Ms Higgins has alleged that in the early hours of March 23, Mr Lehrmann raped her in the parliamentary office of then defence industry minister Linda Reynolds.
Mr Lehrmann says he has hardly thought about the night he drank with colleagues, went back to his desk to prepare for Senate question time, and then left.
Ms Higgins says she’s traumatised after waking mid-rape, Mr Lehrmann allegedly grunting and sweating on top of her.
He said he knew his career was over when reports on Ms Higgins allegations were published in February 2021.
She said “nothing was fine” after the alleged rape in the early hours of Saturday morning on March 23 in 2019.
The bar
Mr Lehrmann said after work on Friday, March 22, he went to the Kingston Hotel with a Liberal colleague, Austin Wenke, for dinner and drinks around 6pm.
“Austin and I went to the Kingston Hotel prior,” Mr Lehrmann told police in an interview on April 19, 2021.
“We often went, not just him, others as well … to the Kingo … and had a steak and a beer.
“Looking at what I spent, I think I only bought the one beer.”
After dinner, Mr Lehrmann said he and Mr Wenke walked to The Dock on the Kingston Foreshore, where several people working for Defence were meeting.
Mr Lehrmann can’t recall who it was that invited them, but said either he or Mr Wenke indicated to Ms Higgins they would be there.
Meanwhile, Ms Higgins walked into The Dock at 7.19pm in a white dress, as captured by CCTV footage. She joined colleagues including Lauren Gain, who worked for the Department of Defence, and Nikita Irvine, the military aide de camp for Senator Reynolds, who were seated together at a table. Both women would be later called as witnesses in trial.
At 7.24pm Ms Higgins is seen going to the bar and buying a single clear drink.
“If it’s dark it would have been vodka, diet Coke. If it’s clear it would have been a vodka, lime and soda,” Ms Higgins told the ACT Supreme court on October 5.
Prosecutor Shane Drumgold asked her: “Do you remember drinking any non-alcoholic drinks that night?”
“Not to my knowledge,” she said.
At 7.50pm a man in the group, not Mr Lehrmann, placed another drink in front of Ms Higgins and at 8.02pm, she went outside to “meet my date for the evening”, with whom she had connected through the Bumble app.
She brought the man back to the table and introduced him to the group and at 8.34pm he buys her a fourth drink.
Mr Lehrmann and Mr Wenke walk into The Dock about 8.40pm and sit at a table away from the rest of the group. After her date leaves just a short time later, Ms Higgins and Ms Gain join Mr Lehrmann and Mr Wenke at their table.
About 9.32pm, Ms Higgins and Mr Lehrmann go to the bar together and Mr Lehrmann buys Ms Higgins her sixth drink.
“I’ve seen myself (on the CCTV footage) stumble a little and start swaying so (my level of intoxication) is getting pretty high,” Ms Higgins said.
About 10.07pm Ms Higgins returns to the bar and buys a seventh drink before rejoining the main group.
A little less than half an hour later, Mr Lehrmann handed Ms Higgins an eighth drink and about 11.08pm the pair return to the bar and he buys her her ninth drink.
At 11.50pm another drink appeared in front of Ms Higgins before the group begins to disperse. Ms Higgins can be seen on CCTV footage talking to someone on the phone, but can’t recall whom.
The club
Mr Lehrmann said four people from the original group – himself, Ms Higgins, Ms Gain and Mr Wenke – decided: “Let’s keep having a drink.”
“I really enjoyed 88mph, it’s a favourite of mine … and I said let’s go there,” Mr Lehrmann recalled in his police interview.
The four colleagues shared an Uber to the club, where they went and “had a boogie”, according to Mr Lehrmann. “The four of us would have been dancing,” he said.
At one point in the next hour, the group sat down in one of the booths in the club, and Ms Gain said Ms Higgins fell over as she walked to take her seat.
“I remember being seated at the club … I remember thinking she (Ms Higgins) was quite drunk,” Ms Gain told the court last week.
“She had fallen over in front of us where we were seated. I think she was coming back from the toilet or the bar, I can’t remember which one, but she had fallen over and she had to pull herself back up.
“I think he (Mr Lehrmann) went to help her, to pull her – or to help her back on to the couch.”
Ms Higgins said she “grazed her knee” and was “embarrassed” that she fell over.
“I remember after I fell over, Bruce helped me up,” she said.
According to his bank statements, Mr Lehrmann only spent $40 and so bought just “a couple of drinks” at the club.
About 1.30am, Mr Lehrmann tells the group he has to leave.
“I (said) I had to go back to Parliament House to get my keys to get back into my apartment, where I was living with my girlfriend,” he said. “Brittany also indicated that she had to attend parliament for something. I didn’t inquire as to what.”
Ms Higgins recalled Mr Wenke and Ms Gain were getting an Uber together because they lived in close proximity to each other and “at that point the suggestion was made that Bruce and I should go together”.
“I got in the cab with him,” she said in a police interview on April 27, 2021.
“He said ‘I have to stop in and pick something up at work’. I wasn’t really cognisant; I wasn’t fully in a state where I was argumentative. I was really open to suggestion.”
Uber to parliament
The Uber dropped Mr Lehrmann and Ms Higgins at the ministerial carpark in front of Parliament House about 1.40am, where Mr Lehrmann buzzed security to let them in because he needed to “pick up some documents”.
“Hi mate, Bruce Lehrmann here with minister Linda Reynolds. I have been requested to pick up some documents. I have forgotten my pass,” the court heard the accused say in the audio recording over the security intercom.
After being granted access, Mr Lehrmann and Ms Higgins are captured through CCTV entering the security checkpoint where they must sign in and go through a metal detector.
Security guard Mark Fairweather, at the checkpoint with colleague Nikola Anderson, said he asked Mr Lehrmann: “Geez, can’t this wait until Monday?”
“I think he said no,” Mr Fairweather told the jury.
Getting to parliament
The security guards both confirm to the court Mr Lehrmann and Ms Higgins don’t have their passes and must produce ID and sign in.
The prosecution alleged Mr Lehrmann had to sign Ms Higgins in, but the defence said without a handwriting expert, that couldn’t be known for sure.
Mr Fairweather said he believed Mr Lehrmann signed Ms Higgins in, while Ms Anderson recalled telling Mr Fairweather to let Ms Higgins do it herself.
Mr Lehrmann and Ms Higgins both put their possessions on trays to pass through security. The defence pointed out that Mr Lehrmann didn’t appear to have deposited any keys, which bolstered Mr Lehrmann’s claim to police that he had returned to parliament to retrieve house keys.
Mr Fairweather asked Ms Higgins to go back and remove her shoes, which were setting off the metal detector. Ms Higgins does so, but CCTV captures her struggling to put the shoes back on.
“She had trouble putting them back on, they’re very high heels and that does happen quite a bit,” Mr Fairweather said.
“I said, ‘don’t worry about it … Carry them with you and put them in on in the suite’.”
Ms Anderson walks the pair to Linda Reynolds’ ministerial suite, M123, and unlocks the door for them at 1.48am. She radios her control room advising them she was opening the office for pass holders and quoted their pass numbers.
Mr Lehrmann and Ms Higgins enter the suite, where there is no CCTV.
And this is where their accounts differ.
The minister’s office
Mr Lehrmann said he entered the office and turned left to his desk, while Ms Higgins turned right into the ministerial suite, opposite the chief of staff’s office.
Phone records show Mr Lehrmann received about six missed calls from his then girlfriend at 2.17am. Mr Lehrmann said he would have put the phone, which was on silent, somewhere on his desk where he would not have noticed the calls coming in.
“I went to my desk, my briefcase was there, I’ve got what I needed for the weekend. I also attended to some of the question time folders,” Mr Lehrmann said.
“I then ordered myself an Uber.”
He said he “didn’t see her again”, after Ms Higgins turned right into the ministerial suite.
But Ms Higgins said she walked through the suite’s reception waiting room and sat on a window ledge looking over into the prime minister’s courtyard and was by herself for a time.
Ms Higgins said she assumed Mr Lehrmann was gathering whatever he said he was picking up.
“And then, I don’t remember whether I went to the couch myself willingly or if I was guided there,” she said in her police interview.
“The next thing I remember was being on the couch as he was raping me. I felt like a bit of time had passed. I felt like he was almost finished. I felt like it had been going on for a while.
“The first thing that I sort of woke up to was a pain in my leg … I was sort of wedged into the corner of the couch, he had his knee on my thigh.”
Ms Higgins said she said “no” at least half a dozen times.
“I remember eventually he stopped … it had ended,” she said.
“He looked at me and he left. I couldn’t get off the couch. And I passed out until the next day.”
At 2.31am, CCTV captures Mr Lehrmann leaving the minister’s suite.
Ms Anderson commented that Mr Lehrmann seemed to be “in a hurry”, but the defence said that was because he had to catch the Uber.
Welfare check
Ms Anderson confirmed she went up at 4.15am to conduct a welfare check on Ms Higgins, who hadn’t been observed leaving yet, and that there were no lights on when she entered the suite.
“As I opened the door, I announced, ‘Security. Hello? Security’, just making my presence known,” she said.
“I’ve approached the minister’s door, the door was shut. I’ve opened the door and I found Ms Higgins … lying on her back, completely naked on that lounge.”
Ms Anderson said Ms Higgins woke up at the sound of the door, and opened her eyes to look at who entered, before curling into the “foetal position”.
“I then proceeded to walk out the door, close the door, walk out of the suite completely and call my team leader to advise him what I had seen,” she said.
Ms Higgins leaves parliament around 10am. She and Mr Lehrmann both return to work on Monday.
