False cover-up allegations destroyed my reputation, says Linda Reynolds

Liberal senator Linda Reynolds has come out swinging over Monday’s bombshell defamation finding, speaking out about the ‘irreparable’ damage to her career, health and the impact on former chief-of-staff Fiona Brown.

Linda Reynolds is suing Brittany Higgins' fiance Brittany Higgins.

Linda Reynolds has spoken out for the first time since the Federal Court comprehensively debunked suggestions she and her office had engaged in a cover-up of Brittany Higgins’ rape.

The WA Liberal senator, who was the defence minister at the time her staffer Ms Higgins was raped by colleague Bruce Lehrmann in the minister’s parliamentary office, said the findings handed down by Justice Michael Lee during his verdict in Mr Lehrmann’s defamation had finally “set the record straight”.

“For three years I have endured intense public scrutiny, vilification, vile trolling and have been demonised as the villain in a story of a political cover-up I have always known to be untrue. Fiona Brown and I have lost our careers, had our reputations destroyed and have had our health seriously and irreparably compromised,” Senator Reynolds said.

“The decision of his Honour Justice Lee has finally set the record straight with respect to the conduct of Ms Brown and myself and the demonstrably false narrative that has dominated headlines and ruined lives and careers. To say I am pleased with the findings in relation to Ms Brown, myself and the cover-up that never was, would be an understatement.”

Beyond Justice Lee’s key finding that, on the balance of probabilities, Mr Lehrmann had in fact raped Ms Higgins, the judgment was notable for demolishing the notion that Senator Reynolds and her chief of staff at the time, Ms Brown, had tried to cover up the incident.

The so-called “cover-up narrative” was at the centre of the Network Ten reports that prompted Mr Lehrmann’s unsuccessful defamation action. Senator Reynolds was subsequently demoted from the defence portfolio, and she recently announced that she would retire from politics at the next election.

Senator Reynolds is currently suing Ms Higgins and her fiance, David Sharaz, for defamation in the Western Australian Supreme Court. That matter is scheduled to go to trial later this year, with the senator vowing to push on with the claim.

Senator Reynolds said she did not wish to make any further comment at this time given her ongoing defamation proceedings against the pair.

“I note as a matter of law that the findings by Justice Lee are not binding on Ms Higgins and Mr Sharaz in respect of their defences to my actions in the Supreme Court of WA. I therefore remain committed to fully vindicating my reputation,” she said.

In his judgment, Justice Lee slammed the cover-up allegation pushed by Ms Higgins and Mr Sharaz as “objectively short on facts, but long on speculation and internal inconsistencies”.

“Trying to particularise it during the evidence was like trying to grab a column of smoke,” Justice Lee wrote.

He found that there was no evidence that anyone was suggesting to Ms Higgins for her not to proceed in any way contrary to her own judgment as to what was best for her, let alone pressuring or threatening her to do so.