What we heard today
After four days of testimony, Brittany Higgins has completed her cross-examination this afternoon.
Just a reminder: Bruce Lehrmann is suing Network Ten and journalist Lisa Wilkinson in the federal court over an interview with Higgins on Ten’s The Project in which she alleged she was raped by a Liberal staffer in Parliament House. Network Ten and Wilkinson are defending the case and Higgins is a witness for the defence.
Lehrmann had pleaded not guilty to one charge of sexual intercourse without consent, denying that any sexual activity had occurred in the criminal trial which was aborted due to juror misconduct.
Here’s what Higgins said under cross-examination today in the defamation case:
Higgins told the court she received $1.9m from the commonwealth after putting in a personal injury claim. The total amount was higher – $2.3m – but legal fees and taxes were taken out of that, she said. It is the first time the value of the compensation pay out has been revealed;
Higgins rejected a suggestion from Lehrmann’s silk, Steve Whybrow SC, that her speech outside the criminal trial was “designed to blow up a retrial”. She also told the court she chose to give evidence in person in the criminal trial and she chose to walk through the press pack because she didn’t want to look “evasive”;
Higgins told the court she wasn’t sure Lehrmann would be found guilty in the criminal trial. Asked by Whybrow if she had told Lisa Wilkinson and a producer at the Project that she didn’t think she could win her case beyond reasonable doubt, Higgins told the court: “It’s true. I had my doubts about the justice system, but I obviously went ahead.”;
Whybrow challenged Higgins over her account of the alleged rape in Senator Linda Reynolds’ suite. He suggested to her that she took off her dress and then lay down on the couch as she was feeling sick. Higgins said she didn’t know how she got to the couch or “how or exactly where” her dress ended up;
Whybrow also suggested to Higgins that she was not really drunk as she entered Parliament House on the night of the alleged rape. “Are you kidding?” Higgins said through tears. “I hadn’t been raped yet but I was skipping in the middle of parliament with no shoes on so it indicates someone is pretty drunk, yes”;
Whybrow read out a message Higgins sent to a former colleague, Liberal staffer Lauren Gain, who was with her on the night of the alleged rape. “Bruce ended up taking me back to Parliament House. I passed out in the office and when I woke up he was sexually assaulting me,” Higgins wrote in the message;
Lehrmann’s silk, Steve Whybrow, put to Higgins that she was concerned about her job and not because she was sexually assaulted by Lehrmann. Higgins responded that “two things can be true”. “I was sexually assaulted, but I was still concerned about my job and I was starting to disclose the severity of the situation,” she told the court;
Higgins said she deleted some conversations on her phone that “triggered her” but denied deliberately deleting messages before handing her phone to police. “Between having five phones in five years and not having the one iCloud account – I had a separate iCloud account for work – and data just got lost,” she said;
The trial continues at 10.15am tomorrow.
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Key event
Higgins asked about allegation she was made to choose between job and police complaint
Before Brittany Higgins was excused from the witness box, Justice Michael Lee said he wanted to ask her a couple of questions “to clarify things”.
Lee said he wanted to ask her not about the rape allegation but about what he referred to as the “obstruction allegation”, meaning the allegation that she felt she had to choose between her job in the Liberal party and continuing with the police complaint.
“… Tell me specifically, what were the express words or the actual actions – not your feelings [but] the express words or the actual actions” of either Fiona Brown, Senator Linda Reynolds or the AFP “which obstructed you or threw up a roadblock” to continue your police complaint, he asked.
Higgins said Brown did not tell her everything that she knew about the night of the alleged rape; that Reynolds and Brown asked her to let them know if she went to the police and “it was framed in the context that it was pertinent because of the election” and finally that Reynolds’ office offered that she could be paid out of her job and return to the Gold Coast before the election.
The trial will resume tomorrow at 10.15am with a number of witnesses for the defence.
Updated
