I was responsible for my actions: Higgins
Brittany Higgins told her chief-of-staff she was ‘responsible for what I drink and my actions’ days after she was allegedly raped by a colleague in the office of a cabinet minister.
Brittany Higgins told her chief-of-staff she was ‘responsible for what I drink and my actions’ days after she was allegedly raped by a colleague in the office of a cabinet minister.
Former ministerial staffer Brittany Higgins told her chief-of-staff she was “responsible for what I drink and my actions” days after she was allegedly raped by a colleague in the office of a cabinet minister.
The accounts Higgins gave to friends and colleagues in the aftermath of the alleged assault have been aired on the sixth day of the trial of Bruce Lehrmann, who has pleaded not guilty to raping her in the office of their then boss Linda Reynolds.
The ACT Supreme Court on Tuesday heard Higgins initially said she was fine before later saying she was so intoxicated in the early hours of March 23 in 2019 it would have been “like f..king a log”.
Friends said Higgins went from being bubbly and excited about work to withdrawn around the time of the alleged rape, failing to socialise and letting dirty dishes accumulate unwashed in her bedroom.
Higgins’ former chief of staff, Fiona Brown, said she was alerted to the alleged incident in Senator Reynolds office by a call from the Department of Finance about three days after the fact.
Brown, who had only been in the role for about two weeks, said she was “shocked” upon learning Higgins and Lehrmann had entered parliament drunk and asked security for access to Senator Reynolds’ suite.
She told jurors after Lehrmann left Higgins was discovered naked on the couch in Senator Reynolds’ office.
“Lauren described it to me that she was naked,” said Brown.
“She was woken up. She woke up, she - Lauren told me that she asked - the security guard asked Brittany was she okay, would she like an ambulance or any medical assistance.
“Brittany said no, turned over and went back to sleep.”
Brown said when she had a meeting with Higgins about the incident, the then 25-year-old said she’d been out that evening and had quite a lot to drink.
“I said, ‘Is there something – is everything okay? Did something happen you didn’t want to have happen?’” said Brown.
“She [Higgins] just sort of shook her head and ‘No,’ she said, ‘I’m responsible for what I drink and my actions.”
Brown reminded Higgins of her obligations laid out in the ministerial statement of standards, which Higgins was asked to read, sign and return.
At another meeting two days later on Thursday March 28, Brown said Higgins told her she remembered Lehrmann “being on top of her”.
“I said, ‘Oh. Oh my god,” said Brown.
“I said, ‘Are you all right? Has – has something happened you didn’t want to have
happen?’
“And she just sort of looks at me and sort of goes like this, with her – so I can’t say the word, but she’s shaking her head as a ‘no’.”
Brown said Higgins seemed composed and said she just wanted to speak with her dad and didn’t want to make a report.
The next week on Monday April 1 Brown met with Higgins and Senator Reynolds to discuss the incident, saying the then defence industry minister wanted to check on the young staffer’s welfare.
“She said if that something had happened, that Brittany was, you know, wanted to talk about or you know, felt there was a complaint to be made, that she was within her rights to make a complaint and to go to the police,” said Brown.
“She would be fully supported.”
Brown said Higgins was concerned about the “impact” to her career if she made a report but said Senator Reynolds encouraged her to speak to police, which she did later that day.
When asked to reflect on whether she supported Higgins after the alleged rape, Brown broke down in tears and was excused before later returning.
A Department Liaison Officer from Defence working in Senator Reynolds’ office at the time, Christopher Payne, said he remembered Higgins became visibly upset and began crying when she spoke to him about the alleged rape days after it happened.
“The description of the events that Brittany gave me was that she had returned to Parliament House with Lehrmann in an Uber and had come through security to the office,” he said.
“She recalls, I believe, that she was near the window sill in the office and then effectively, blacked out and did not recall anything further until such time as she woke up on the couch in the office with Lehrmann on top of her.”
Payne said he asked Higgins directly “did he rape you?”
“She said ‘I could not have consented. It would have been like f..king a log’,” he said.
Lehrmann has been charged with sexual intercourse without consent and recklessness towards whether Higgins was consenting.
The alleged rape of Brittany Higgins took place at an office at Parliament House.
One of their former colleagues Nicole Hamer told the court via videolink from Perth that Mr Lehrmann and another colleague had asked her to reach out to Higgins before meeting her for an informal job interview at the Kingston Hotel.
“He [Lehrmann] commented on her being good looking,” said Hamer.
Hamer said she knew Lehrmann kept “quite a substantial” amount of alcohol at his desk when he worked for Reynolds as assistant minister for Home Affairs but said she didn’t know if he’d taken it with him to the new office for defence industry.
“He had quite a big range of alcohol,” she said.
“There was spirits, there was whisky, there was wine.”
Earlier, Brown told jurors she discussed the incident first with Lehrmann but did not share with him the report detailing Higgins’ state of undress.
She said Lehrmann told her he went to Senator Reynolds’ office to drink whiskey but denied he had been inebriated when he arrived with Higgins at about 1.40am.
“He [Lehrmann] said that he came back to the office to drink some whiskey and I questioned that and said, ‘It seems a bit unusual to me’,” said Brown.
“Who comes back to the office to drink whiskey?’ He [Lehrmann] said, ‘Oh yes, people do it all the time’.”
Brown said Lehrmann said he drank about two glasses of whiskey and that Higgins was fine when he left.
Higgins has previously told jurors she was obliterated by alcohol that night and that after entering Reynold’s office she sat alone by herself on a window ledge overlooking the prime minister’s courtyard.
She then alleges she was shocked into consciousness “mid rape” to find Lehrmann penetrating her without consent on the couch in the ministerial office, her legs pinned open by his knees.
Higgins’ former roommate, Alex Humphreys, said Higgins was “lovely” and “bubbly” when she first moved into the sharehouse in Canberra, but everything had changed around the time the election was called in April 2019.
Alex Humphreys said Higgins went from being enthusiastic and social to withdrawn and barely leaving her room.
“There was a few times I went and knocked on her door to see how she was going but she’d normally be, like, asleep quite early at night, all curled up and she just never seemed to want to come,” she said.
Alex Humphreys also said Higgins went from being tidy to messy, eating lots of ready meals and letting dirty dishes pile up in her bedroom.
“I know when she moved out she – there was, like, bowls and plates and things like that in the rubbish bin,” she said.
“I don’t think she could clean them or got around to cleaning them but her room got a lot messier.
“I noticed she was doing a lot of, like, frozen meals and she’d come out with dishes, like, once a week, a big pile of dishes that she’d pop in the dishwasher.”
Higgins has told jurors on Sunday morning March 23 she awoke to find herself naked and alone on the couch of Senator Reynolds. She broke down in tears, vomited in the ministerial toilet and pulled herself together to leave at about 10am.
The security guard who found Higgins, Nikola Anderson, said Lehrmann was seen hurrying to leave parliament about 20-minutes after the pair arrived together.
“He left in a hurry,” Anderson said.
She said she went up to Senator Reynolds’ office in the early hours of the morning and announced herself as she entered to find Higgins completely naked on the couch in the ministerial office.
“I’ve opened the door and I’ve found Higgins… lying on her back completely naked on that lounge,” she said.
“As I’ve opened the door, the air from the door has made noise or what not, and she’s opened her eyes… looked at me and… proceeded to roll over into foetal position facing the desk.
“I then proceeded to walk out the door… and call my team leader to advise him what I had seen.”
On Tuesday Parliament House cleaner Carlos Ramos told jurors he had been asked to do a job outside of his normal hours on the Saturday and clean Senator Reynolds’ office.
He said that “at first” he was asked to do a normal clean, but upon calling his supervisor to ask if there was any special requirements was told to look out for “condoms”.
Before the alleged rape Higgins and Lehrmann were out drinking on the evening on the 22nd of March 2019 with Lauren Gaines, then a defence department staffer, and Austen Wenke, an adviser to then home affairs minister Peter Dutton at The Dock before they went to the 88mph club.
Gaines describes Higgins as “quite drunk”.
“She [Higgins] had fallen over in front of us where we were seated … and she had to pull herself back up,” Gaines, a communications advisor for the department of defence at the time, said.
CCTV shown to the court in the first week of the trial showed Ms Higgins had about 11 drinks at The Dock before she, Lehrmann, Gaines and Wenke went to 88mph.
Wenke told the court he went home with Gaines that evening.
Meghan Markle’s favourite face gym is opening in Australia, Greta Thunberg publishes Andrew Tate’s contact details
All the news that's fit to mint.
Emily Ratajkowski joins the competitive world of online dating, Nick Kyrgios quits at the last minute
All the news that's fit to mint.