Key evidence which led to Lehrmann rape finding

In February 2020, Brittany Higgins called her father.

Over the previous 11 months, Matthew Higgins had not heard much from his daughter, he told the Federal Court last year.

After travelling to visit her in Canberra in March 2019, he had noticed she had become withdrawn.

She had previously told him about an “incident with someone at work”.

Then in a phone call in February 2020, she made a stunning disclosure.

“Brittany had told me … what the inappropriate (incident) that had happened at Parliament was, that she’d been raped,” Mr Higgins told the court during his evidence late last year.

Mr Higgins said his daughter urged him to “keep” his “cool”.

On Monday, Justice Michael Lee dismissed Bruce Lehrmann’s lawsuit against Network 10 and Lisa Wilkinson and in doing so found that he raped his ex-colleague Ms Higgins at Parliament House in March 2019.

Justice Lee gave careful analysis to Ms Higgins’ actions in the days, weeks and months that followed, before finding – on the civil standard of the balance of probabilities – that she was sexually assaulted by Lehrmann.

“One wonders why a daughter would say such a thing to a clearly loving father absent a genuine belief a sexual assault had taken place,” Justice Lee said.

Justice Lee noted that these admissions to her father were important in assessing her motivation given they were made before her partner David Sharaz “pitched” the story to journalists and the evolution of a “political cover-up” narrative.

In an attempt to discredit her during the trial, Lehrmann’s lawyers had pointed to a work email sent by Ms Higgins to him three days after the incident.

“Hi Bruce, I’m phoning a friend – need some help with the task Drew set me,” Ms Higgins said in the email.

But Justice Lee found that Ms Higgins actions were “consistent” with a woman who had not yet “come to terms” with having to work with someone who had sexually assaulted her.

“By the time of these interactions, it is quite conceivable that Ms Higgins would be driven by conflicting emotions: self-doubt, concern that she would be humiliated by word leaking out to her colleagues and questioning the prudence of her own behaviour,” Justice Lee said.

Justice Lee also considered contemporaneous disclosures Ms Higgins made to departmental liaison officer Christopher Payne, Major Nikita Irvine and her ex-boyfriend Ben Dillaway.

During the trial Mr Dillaway said that several days following the incident she told him she was raped.

“I asked her some more questions about it,” Mr Dillaway told the court.

“I recall asking her along the lines of ‘were you raped’.

“During the call she’s become quite upset and the conversation ended.”

He told the court she was worried.

“What was she worried about?” Justice Michael Lee asked during the trial.

“Becoming known as the girl who was raped in Parliament,” Mr Dillaway said.

“She said that to you?” Justice Lee said.

“I believe so, yes,” Mr Dillaway added.

NED-11885-Justice-Michael-Lee-key findings-against-Bruce-LehrmannJustice Lee also found Ms Higgins also made disclosures to her boss, Senator Reynolds’ chief of staff Fiona Brown, during a meeting on March 28, as well as to Gold Coast-based Queensland MP Sam O’Connor.

Mr O’Connor, the member for Bonney, told the court in his evidence, that during the week following the incident he spoke to her on the phone, during which she said she’d been “raped”.

“I absolutely remember the word rape – that’s not something you forget,” Mr O’Connor said during his evidence.

“And she absolutely said he had taken her back to Parliament House, something along the lines of had to drop in there or something.”