Brittany Higgins has told a court the public airing of allegations against former attorney general, Christian Porter, prompted her to start thinking about going public about her own alleged rape.
Higgins also revealed she was thinking about writing a book about her experiences well before she was interviewed by police in 2021, and that popular Nine journalist Peter FitzSimons had helped facilitate offers from publishers, one of which was worth $325,000.
In cross-examination on Friday afternoon defence barrister, Steven Whybrow, continued to question Higgins about her February 2021 decision to reinstate a police complaint against Bruce Lehrmann.
Higgins has alleged she was raped by Lehrmann, who was then her colleague, in the early hours of 23 March 2019. Lehrmann has denied the allegations and pleaded not guilty to one charge of sexual assault without consent.
Higgins said she first began thinking about taking her allegations public after the reporting of allegations against Porter, who has repeatedly denied any wrongdoing.
“The Porter allegations, that really prompted me to start having conversations with friends and family, so people who aren’t known to the press, I was talking to them about it,” Higgins told the court.
She also said she began thinking about writing a book about her experiences in early 2021, prior to speaking to police.
“It wasn’t really a firm thing and there was no prospect of it ever being a real tangible product, but I just felt like I needed to document my experience,” she said.
“So it was a really strange, full-circle moment when that actually came to fruition.”
Higgins said she had been encouraged by FitzSimons and his wife, Lisa Wilkinson, a journalist with The Project, to pursue a book deal.
“We met at an event and he suggested ‘you need to write a book’ and said he would act as my agent,” she said.
Higgins received confirmation on 16 March 2021 that publishers were interested, the court heard.
She said FitzSimons came back to her saying he had a publisher offering $325,000 for her book.
Higgins said she was “blown away” by the offer.
“I really didn’t ask him, he absolutely approached me to do it and said ‘I know people’,” Higgins told the court.
She said she had actually begun formulating the outline of a book about a month before the FitzSimons offer.
Higgins was asked if that meant she was thinking about a book prior to her police interview in 2021. She confirmed that she had been.
Earlier on Friday, Higgins revealed that she had been concerned about the flow of information from police to home affairs minister, Peter Dutton, in the lead-up to her reinstating her complaint in February 2021.
The court heard that, prior to handing police her phone, she deleted material from the device, including audio files, text messages and images of her former boss and cabinet minister Linda Reynolds.
Higgins said she had wanted to “purge” her phone of anything related to the alleged rape.
She said she had also been concerned about the fact that Dutton had appeared to know “baseline” information about her case prior to her giving her police interview.
The trial continues on Monday before chief justice Lucy McCallum.
• Information and support for anyone affected by rape or sexual abuse issues is available from the following organisations. In Australia, support is available at 1800Respect (1800 737 732). In the UK, Rape Crisis offers support on 0808 802 9999. In the US, Rainn offers support on 800-656-4673. Other international helplines can be found at ibiblio.org/rcip/internl.html
