In 2021, former political staffer Brittany Higgins got here ahead in media interviews, alleging that about two years earlier she had been raped by a colleague inside Australia’s Parliament Home, on a sofa within the workplace of their mutual boss Linda Reynolds, a high-ranking lawmaker.
This week, a federal decide dominated that she was telling the reality. The discovering concluded an at-times salacious trial that gripped the nation and its media — together with the accusation that one outlet, Seven Community, paid for medication and intercourse work companies to safe an interview with the person accused of rape, Bruce Lehrmann. The community has denied these claims.
The ruling Monday was in a defamation swimsuit introduced by Lehrmann in opposition to a journalist, Lisa Wilkinson, and the tv channel, Community 10, that had aired Higgins’s story. Lehrmann continues to disclaim the allegation.
Wilkinson advised reporters exterior the court docket: “I really feel glad for the ladies of Australia in the present day.” She and Community 10 had relied on a fact protection, which means they may not have defamed Lehrmann if the court docket concluded their story was right.
Higgins stated Saturday in a press release that it “is now time to heal.”
“I used to be 24 once I was raped in Parliament Home,” she stated. “It has been 5 years of prison and civil trials and authorities inquiries for the reality to be heard.”
Her allegation was central to Australia’s #MeToo second, with outrage laser-focused on goings-on at Parliament. In 2021, the nation’s lawyer normal was additionally accused of rape — claims he denied — and a evaluate discovered that about half of Parliament workers surveyed had been bullied, sexually harassed or sexually assaulted in a piece context.
In her assertion, Higgins stated the tales shared with the evaluate, “like mine, have shone a lightweight on the circumstances which have fed such a poisonous tradition and been willfully ignored for too lengthy.”
She and Lehrmann turned family names “for causes neither of them would want to be,” stated Rachael Burgin, professor of prison justice at Swinburne College of Expertise and chief government of Rape and Sexual Assault Analysis and Advocacy, an Australian nonprofit group.
She stated she hoped Monday’s “momentous” choice would “deliver an finish to the continuing ache, trauma and mud-sledging of the sufferer on this case,” referring to press and social media scrutiny of Higgins.
“She has completely modified Australia for the higher,” Burgin added. “She stood tall.”
A prison trial charging Lehrmann with committing sexual activity with out consent — to which he pleaded not responsible — was deserted in December 2022 due to juror misconduct. It was not reopened with a brand new jury out of concern for Higgins’s well being.
In his ruling Monday, Justice Michael Lee stated of the choice to sue for defamation that, “having escaped the lions’ den, Mr. Lehrmann made the error of going again for his hat.”
“He has now been discovered, by the civil customary of proof, to have engaged in an important unsuitable,” he stated, although he emphasised that Lehrmann had not been convicted of a criminal offense.
The trial offered a stream of media fodder Down Underneath.
Caught up in it was the Seven Community tv channel, which had broadcast unique interviews with Lehrmann in 2023. A former producer testified that Lehrmann acquired perks from the community together with reimbursement for cocaine and companies from intercourse employees — which Seven denies. Lehrmann testified that he acquired a 12 months’s hire value about $65,000 from the channel, public broadcaster ABC reported.
Lee didn’t rule on the veracity of the producer’s claims, which he thought had been tangential to the central authorized query.
Seven and Lehrmann’s attorneys didn’t reply to requests for remark.
Peter Bartlett, a defamation legislation professional who efficiently represented a media outlet in one other latest headline-grabbing trial, stated the ruling in opposition to Lehrmann may “be a lift for freedom of speech in Australia,” which isn’t constitutionally protected there.
In Australia, editors and in-house legal professionals are usually extra conservative than in america when deciding what to publish, Bartlett stated. Underneath Australian legislation, somebody sued for defamation normally should show {that a} declare was true — reasonably than the aggrieved get together proving it was false — besides in restricted protected contexts.
Bartlett defended Fairfax Media when it was sued by a adorned soldier, Ben Roberts-Smith, over tales that alleged he had illegally killed unarmed prisoners in Afghanistan. In June, the decide in that case additionally discovered the tales had been considerably true.
“Within the two most up-to-date high-profile choices in Australia, Roberts-Smith and Lehrmann, the plaintiffs have each failed,” Bartlett stated, calling it a “very uncommon” interval within the Australian defamation world. In each instances, “the trials have been much more damaging than the unique publication,” he added.
Higgins’s allegation additionally turned a political difficulty. She and Lehrmann had been each employed by the Liberal Social gathering — which heads Australia’s conservative coalition, in authorities on the time — when the rape occurred. In 2022, Prime Minister Scott Morrison issued a public apology to Higgins for “the horrible issues that happened” in Parliament.
Burgin stated that the query of what occurred within the early hours of March 23, 2019, in Reynolds’s workplace has been “omnipresent” in Australia, the topic of “arguments across the dinner desk, disagreements amongst mates.”
“It was handled like a cleaning soap opera, the place new characters had been dragged in each second,” she stated. “Sadly, these characters — these are actual individuals.”
