Brittany Higgins knew her partner had given documents related to her alleged rape to journalists before police had formally interviewed her, a Canberra court has heard.
Former Liberal Party staffer Bruce Lehrmann is on trial in the ACT Supreme Court, charged with raping his then colleague, Ms Higgins, in Parliament House in March 2019.
He has pleaded not guilty, and says he never had sex with Ms Higgins.
Today, the fourth day of his trial, the court heard that News Corp journalist Samantha Maiden published details of the alleged assault on February 15, 2021, and TV host Lisa Wilkinson broadcast an interview with Ms Higgins that night on The Project.
Police interviewed Ms Higgins about the allegations more than a week later, on February 24.
Ms Higgins told the court today she followed up with a journalist from The Australian to confirm she had received a timeline detailing who was aware of the alleged rape.
Mr Lehrmann's barrister, Steven Whybrow, asked her:
"Do you accept that you were involved in distributing that document ... wider than just the police, hours before The Project went to air but hours after it became apparent?"
She responded: "Yes, I was involved in that process."
Yesterday, Ms Higgins told the court she was "passed out on Valium" when the timeline was distributed, and that it was sent by her partner, David Sharaz, not her.
"I was pretty out of it because I was taking a lot of Valium at the time … and my partner made a decision that he will very freely say that he regrets," she said.
"He sent it to a couple of journos, then that trust was breached and it went to the rest of the press gallery.
"When I was passed out on Valium, David made a call to just send."
Brittany Higgins denies deleting text with intention to hide it from police
Earlier today, Ms Higgins was asked if she deleted a message from her phone before she handed it to police.
Defence lawyer Steven Whybrow asked Ms Higgins if she had deleted a text sent to her ex-partner that read: "I'm not interested in pursuing it [a complaint about the alleged assault] but it's all beyond strange."
When asked if Ms Higgins deleted things off her phone before giving it to police, Ms Higgins responded: "It wasn't with the intention of keeping it from police."
Mr Whybrow asked whether she also deliberately deleted all images of then minster Linda Reynolds, her boss at the time, from her phone.
"I never wanted to see Linda Reynolds's face again so I cleared off any photos I had of working for her," she said.
"My phone is my home and I just didn't want her in my home. I wanted her out. I wanted her out of my life.
"I wanted to scrub all the horrible parts from my day-to-day life."
But when asked if she then supplied a photo of Senator Reynolds to News Corp journalist Samantha Maiden in January 2021, before going public with her allegations, Ms Higgins said she had.
She said that image had been posted to her Instagram for some time.
'It's deeply insulting': Higgins denies lying about alleged rape
During her cross-examination, Mr Whybrow suggested to Ms Higgins that she had not attended a doctor's appointment after the alleged assault in Parliament House because she never "had sexual intercourse" with Mr Lehrmann.
"The reason you didn't follow through with any of those I suggest is because you hadn't had sexual intercourse with Mr Lehrmann on that weekend, consensual or otherwise," the barrister said.
Ms Higgins vehemently rejected the claim.
"You are so incorrect. I don’t know if you’ve ever gone through a trauma before, but confronting it with professionals is a really hard thing to do," she replied.
Mr Whybrow also suggested Ms Higgins might have lied to her then chief-of-staff Fiona Brown about needing a sick day on the Friday after the alleged assault, saying she instead went out for breakfast with an ex-partner.
"You told Fiona Brown that you had to go to the doctor to bolster your claims that something non-consensual had happened," Mr Whybrow suggested to Ms Higgins.
"Nothing that you are saying right now is true and it's deeply insulting," Ms Higgins replied.
Trial enters fourth day
Yesterday, the court heard Ms Higgins secretly recorded a conversation with then cabinet minister Michaelia Cash about her alleged rape, and then sent the recording to a friend.
Under cross-examination, Ms Higgins said she spoke to Senator Cash, her then boss, about the alleged assault almost two years afterwards, in January 2021.
In response to questioning, she said she covertly recorded the phone call to protect herself, and recorded another conversation with Senator Cash's chief of staff, Daniel Try.
She told the court she found the conversation with Senator Cash odd.
"It was so strange because the entire call she was pretending, like, she didn't know and she thought a security guard assaulted me," Ms Higgins said.
Earlier in the day, Mr Lehrmann's lawyers pointed out inconsistencies in Ms Higgins's evidence in court.
Ms Higgins conceded she had "made a mistake" in her testimony when discussing the white dress she wore on the night of her alleged rape.
Under questioning, Ms Higgins initially said she put the dress in a plastic bag and kept it under her bed for six months, before washing it and wearing it one last time.
But later, under cross-examination, Ms Higgins said the final occasion she wore the dress was to a Liberal function in May in Perth.
When Mr Whybrow asked if she had lied about keeping it under her bed for six months, Ms Higgins said she made an error.
"I made a mistake … I was just wrong," she said.
The court was also shown text messages Ms Higgins sent to a former partner in the days following the alleged rape, in which they discussed what happened that night.
Mr Lehrmann's trial is expected to run for at least four weeks.
The case continues.
