‘Brittany Higgins fairytale needed a villain’: Linda Reynolds fights cover-up allegations

Linda Reynolds has used a trove of photographs and text messages to allege Brittany Higgins and her husband David Sharaz deliberately created a plan to falsely portray the Coalition minister as the ‘villain’.

Brittany Higgins and Scott Morrison on the campaign trail in 2019.

Linda Reynolds has used a trove of photographs and text messages to allege Brittany Higgins and her husband David Sharaz deliberately created a plan to falsely portray the Coalition minister as the “villain” who led a cover-up of Ms Higgins’ alleged Parliament House rape.

The first day of the senator’s defamation trial against Ms Higgins saw her lawyer Martin Bennett tender multiple photographs showing Ms Higgins smiling and laughing while out on the campaign trail across Perth just months after she was allegedly raped by then-colleague Bruce Lehrmann.

Mr Bennett said the evidence showed how Ms Higgins and Mr Sharaz had used falsehoods and lies to create a narrative that Senator Reynolds had led a political cover-up of Ms Higgins’ alleged rape.

“Every fairytale needs a villain, and in 2020 or 2021, Ms Higgins and her then-partner and now husband, Mr Sharaz, cast Senator Reynolds in that role for their fictional story of a cover-up of the rape,” Mr Bennett said. “The fact she had been raped was traumatic and terrible but it needed something more to attract the attention, to attract media ­interest, to attract the promotion of Ms Higgins, so she made it a political sex scandal. That’s the fiction that needed a villain and she cast Linda Reynolds in that role.”

Linda Reynolds arrives for the first day of the defamation trial. Picture: Colin Murty

Mr Bennett said the images and text messages showed that the $2.445m settlement secured from the commonwealth by Ms Higgins was built on a falsity that Senator Reynolds had been given no opportunity to correct. He said the outcome of the confidential mediation between Ms Higgins and the federal government – which was leaked to the media “before the ink was dry” – would have caused the public to believe Ms Higgins’ claims that the senator had harassed her and isolated her in the wake of her ­alleged rape.

“Any person in Australia reading this would automatically think that the allegations made by Ms Higgins were so true, so damning, so correct in their allegations against Senator Reynolds that the commonwealth paid $2.445m on a single instance of mediation for proceedings not yet filed,” Mr Bennett said.

Brittany Higgins and Linda Reynolds on the campaign trail in 2019.

“And because the commonwealth took over the conduct of Senator Reynolds’ defence of this claim, but denied her the deed, she was bound by that aspersion.”

The settlement was based in part on a claim by Ms Higgins that she had been ostracised by Senator Reynolds in the wake of the alleged rape, with the settlement stating that she was sent to work in Perth on the senator’s re-election campaign and “was required to work mostly on her own in a hotel room seven days a week for six weeks”. During that time, the claim said, her mental health deteriorated.

But Mr Bennett read out multiple text messages sent by Ms Higgins to her boyfriend at the time, Ben Dillaway, in which she detailed her time working and socialising in and around Perth during the campaign.

The messages described how she spent her time doorknocking and attending campaign events, community forums and dinners during her weeks there.

“Been out and about doing ground level campaigning. It’s been pretty fun actually,” she wrote in one of several messages to Mr Dillaway read out in court.

“My day has been awesome, mostly spent poolside,” read ­another.

Mr Bennett also tendered a ­series of photos showing a smiling Ms Higgins with politicians including Senator Reynolds and then-prime minister Scott Morrison during the campaign.

Ms Higgins also attended a birthday dinner thrown by Senator Reynolds just before the election, as well as a post-election debrief with champagne at the senator’s home the day after the poll.

“There is event after event after event,” Mr Bennett said, saying it was “palpably false” to suggest that Senator Reynolds had cast her out and isolated her.

BLOG: How the day in court unfolded on Friday

Mr Bennett also described how the senator was protective of Ms Higgins and was “furious” with Mr Lehrmann when she first learned that the pair had accessed her ministerial suite in the early hours of a Saturday morning, the time and place in which the ­alleged rape occurred.

He said Senator Reynolds was acting protectively towards Ms Higgins when she told her chief of staff Fiona Brown to speak to the Australian Federal Police about the incident.

“Ms Higgins couldn’t remember, she was obviously upset about something and there was likely to be something of a sexual nature had occurred,” Mr Bennett said, noting that at that stage Senator Reynolds did not know the exact nature of the incident.

“She was furious at Lehrmann to take advantage of an intoxicated young staffer. She told Ms Brown to go to the AFP, and Ms Brown to her credit said ‘it’s Brittany’s choice, her agency’,” he said.

Mr Bennett told the court that Senator Reynolds did not know that Ms Higgins had been raped on the couch in her office at the time she met her in the same room shortly after the incident.

The senator had been told that Ms Higgins had told another staffer that Mr Lehrmann “was on top of me” shortly after the pair had entered the office. But there was no information provided to the senator at that time about where in the suite the alleged rape had occurred. “She said ‘he was on top of me’. There’s no suggestion at that ­moment that sexual assault had occurred on the couch,” Mr Bennett said.

Ms Higgins, he said, would later say the senator was aware that the rape had occurred on her couch when she met Senator Reynolds in her office to discuss the security breach. That was used by Ms Higgins to “falsely ­attribute a callousness to Senator Reynolds that was wrong in fact”.

“Feelings are not facts,” Mr Bennett said. “Her perception is not proof of the fact. There was no basis for Senator Reynolds to know that her couch was where the sexual assault had occurred.”

Mr Bennett also addressed Senator Reynolds’ infamous ­description that she had described Ms Higgins as a “lying cow” after the staffer went public on TV program The Project with her allegations of a political cover-up.

Mr Bennett said Senator Reynolds’ use of the word “lying” to describe Ms Higgins was ­appropriate, given the “falsity” of her allegations about the senator’s cover-up, while the word “cow” was unfortunate but reflected the senator’s “intense anger” about the claims.

“When you’re watching someone lie about you, ‘lying cow’ is an entirely defensible thing to do,” Mr Bennett said.

The senator had swiftly settled a defamation action threatened against her by Ms Higgins over the comment, and apologised as she did not want to interfere with the police investigation and ­potential prosecution.

“The reason she did that is ­because people might have interpreted her comment as casting doubt on the veracity of the rape allegation,” Mr Bennett said.

“Senator Reynolds apologised and entered into a non-disparagement clause that Ms Higgins forgot about immediately.”

Friday’s proceedings were consumed by Mr Bennett’s opening address. Senator Reynolds will give evidence all next week when the trial resumes on Monday.

The defence filed by Ms Higgins alleges that Senator Reynolds “engaged in a campaign of harassment” against her, including providing confidential information to the media.

The defence also amplifies her allegations that she was the victim of an attempted cover-up, stating that she felt under pressure not to make a complaint “in the interests of the Liberal Party”.