Linda Reynolds v Brittany Higgins: Judge won’t be swayed by sideshows

A photograph of Brittany Higgins, far right, from when she was working with the Linda Reynolds campaign in Perth

It took only minutes after Linda Reynolds’ lawyer, Martin Bennett, produced the memorable line that “every fairytale needs a villain” before the cesspit of social media chewed it up and spat out a revised version.

No matter that Bennett had spent most of the morning detailing Reynolds’ actual case: that Brittany Higgins and her now-husband David Sharaz had concocted a “fictional story of a cover-up” by Reynolds of the young woman’s rape allegations.

No matter that Bennett reaffirmed Reynolds had never questioned the veracity of Higgins’ account of being raped – indeed, had urged that it be immediately reported to police. That would have spoiled the narrative.

Instead, “Reynolds’ lawyer ­believes that rape is a fairytale!” lit up the twittersphere.

Climate 200 founder and teals campaigner Simon Holmes a Court posted that “every day Linda Reynolds pursues Brittany Higgins is another day we’re reminded about her government’s hostility towards victims of sexual assault”.

The bid by some of Higgins’ supporters to reframe the case as forcing a rape victim to prove her rape will be a recurring theme through the next five weeks of the trial.

But inside the courtroom, Higgins’ lawyers are confined to a more difficult task: substantiating her claims that Reynolds not only failed to support her after she revealed the assault, but actively ­attempted to cover it up “in the interests of the Liberal Party”.

Difficult because in his judgment in the Lehrmann defamation case, Justice Michael Lee, while finding on the balance of probabilities that Lehrmann raped Higgins, expressly rejected her claims that Reynolds was involved in a cover-up.

On Friday, Bennett laid out the battleground on which he intends to fight: the “degree of sophistication” in the planning by Higgins and Sharaz to ensure the rape story maximised damage to Reynolds and the Coalition government; and the “bare-faced falsity” of Higgins’ claims that led to the commonwealth’s lightning-fast $2.4m settlement.

Far from being isolated in Perth after the incident, Bennett said, Higgins sent her former boyfriend text messages saying “it’s been pretty fun” and “my day’s been awesome, mostly poolside”.

Higgins had not been shut in a hotel room alone working seven days a week, as she’d claimed, but was out and about campaigning.

Next week, Higgins’ lawyers will spell out their defence in full.

They have already outlined their plan of attack in court documents, alleging that Reynolds “engaged in a campaign of harassment” against Higgins, including providing confidential information to the media.

But Higgins’s lawyers did not address dozens of pages of particulars that were provided by Reynolds detailing her claims that senior Labor figures – including Katy Gallagher and Penny Wong – were drip-fed false information by Higgins and Sharaz as part of a larger plan to destroy Senator Reynolds’ career, simply stating that she “denies the allegations”.

Instead, Higgins’ defence contains a series of allegations that Reynolds “engaged in a campaign of harassment” against her by leaking confidential material relating to the mediation of her compensation claim against the federal government and by questioning the claim.

Justice Paul Tottle must decide whether Reynolds was defamed, not whether Higgins was raped.

He won’t be distracted by spurious attempts – inside the court or out – to stray from that task.