The two men decided on takeaway coffee.
One was a detective who had been investigating allegations of rape committed by the Liberal party staffer Bruce Lehrmann in Parliament House. The other was Lehrmann’s defence barrister.
Across an open square from the Cupping Room cafe where they met was the ACT supreme court, where the jury in the Lehrmann rape trial was five days into its deliberations. Just north-east of the cafe was the ACT director of public prosecutions’ office.
The two men walked to a nearby laneway. Det Insp Marcus Boorman, who instigated the October 2022 meeting, appeared to be “anxious and agitated and concerned we not be seen speaking together in direction line of sight of the [Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions],” Steve Whybrow, Lehrmann’s defence barrister, wrote in a submission to an inquiry that began this week into Lehrmann’s prosecution.
Boorman indicated that he was “quite distressed” about the prosecution, and thought Lehrmann was innocent, Whybrow wrote.
“I recall he said words to the effect ‘If the jury comes back with a guilty verdict, I’m resigning’,” Whybrow wrote.
“I had never before had a conversation with a police officer who had indicated that they were going to resign because they had been ordered to prosecute someone they considered was innocent.”
Days after that meeting, Lehrmann’s trial for the alleged rape of his former Liberal party colleague Brittany Higgins in Parliament House in 2019 was abandoned due to juror misconduct. A member of the jury brought a research paper on sexual assault into the jury room despite repeated instructions from the judge not to conduct outside research. A planned retrial was ultimately abandoned after expert medical advice warned it posed a “significant and unacceptable risk” to Higgins’s life.
Lehrmann pleaded not guilty at trial and has denied all wrongdoing.
But the extraordinary coffee catch-up in Canberra was just one of several dramatic irregularities in the Lehrmann case that have been revealed in the inquiry this week – and just one of a number of things that concerned the detective prosecuting the case.
‘Unsophisticated corruption’ or ‘atomic-level stupidity’
The ACT government established a board of inquiry after receiving a “number of complaints and allegations” about the trial. It was concerned about an erosion in confidence in the administration of justice and fairness to all parties.
This week, the ACT director of public prosecutions, Shane Drumgold SC, was the first witness to give evidence, where his actions, conversations and decisions were examined in detail.
He made a number of explosive claims, alleging police investigating the allegations against Lehrmann engaged in either “unsophisticated corruption” or “atomic-level stupidity”.
Drumgold also said he believed the rogue juror who derailed the trial by bringing in disallowed outside materials was also the sole juror holding out against convicting Lehrmann.
Drumgold, at one stage, believed there was a “possible” political conspiracy to “kill” the case against Lehrmann. Later he revised his opinion, saying that, having seen all of the evidence, he believed a “skills deficit” in the investigating police explained “the many strange things” that concerned him about the case.
He told the inquiry he was deeply concerned about a lack of “objectivity” from investigating police, citing the secret coffee meeting between Whybrow and Boorman, Boorman’s ultimate refusal to be involved in charging Lehrmann, and Det Leading Sen Const Trent Madders’ claim he was physically ill when Lehrmann was charged.
“If you’re central to an investigation and your mindset is such that you’re going to be physically ill if your investigation results in charges, it can’t do anything but interfere with your objectivity during the course of an investigation.
“These were key people in an investigation, these people ran the investigation … they engaged with the complainant, every time the complainant went in to give some evidence, these were the views she was met with.
“That’s the vice in this.”
The inquiry also heard how the ACT police erroneously sent Higgins’s private counselling notes to Lehrmann’s legal team. Drumgold admitted to reading those counselling notes, after he’d learned they had been improperly shared with the defence. Drumgold later learned Lehrmann’s lawyers had not read any of the material and had undertaken not to look at it.
In his 71-page submission to the inquiry, Drumgold said police investigating the allegation Lehrmann raped Higgins in the Parliament House office of the then defence industry minister Linda Reynolds in March 2019 had engaged either in “unsophisticated corruption” or “atomic-level stupidity” in sending her counselling notes to Lehrmann’s lawyers.
Police interviewed the ACT victims of crime commissioner, who was acting as a support person to Higgins, raising concerns from the DPP that it was an attempt to prevent the commissioner from “insulating Ms Higgins from direct contact with police, in order to increase the emotional distress of Ms Higgins, in the hope that she would not be able to proceed as a witness”.
Drumgold said that the police relied on inaccurate “stereotypes” and “rape myths” about complainants in disbelieving Higgins.
“For example, thinking a genuine complainant would never go to the media. Or a genuine complainant would run off and report it and tell everyone immediately, these sort of stereotypical beliefs that there is a standard way a sexual assault victim would behave.”
During the trial, Whybrow said Drumgold approached him and said of the investigating officers who might be called to give evidence: “Any opinion by those boofheads about the strength of this case is not admissible.”
‘I entirely misread the situation’
But Drumgold has faced questions over his own objectivity, and his actions.
He told the inquiry he had believed it was “possible, if not probable” there was a political conspiracy to try to “kill” the criminal prosecution of Lehrmann. But he later said he believed errors – such as sending Higgins’s counselling notes to Lehrmann’s lawyers – were “just a mess up” rather than deliberate efforts to sabotage the case.
“My current view, having read all the police statements, it was most likely a skills deficit on the part of investigators.”
Drumgold conceded he “misread the situation” during a conversation with the journalist Lisa Wilkinson over a speech she planned to give at the Logie awards. Drumgold said he told Wilkinson that Lehrmann’s defence team could apply for a stay in his trial if there was undue publicity surrounding it.
Wilkinson has said she was never warned against giving the speech – which ultimately caused the trial to be delayed by three months – and Drumgold conceded to the inquiry he should have been more explicit.
“I would accept that I entirely misread the situation,” he said. “I’m not a publicist, I’m the director of public prosecutions.”
Drumgold admitted he also made a false statement to the court during the trial stay application about who had edited a note about his conversation with Wilkinson, and when that had occurred. But he said he spoke in “error” and did not make a “knowingly false” statement.
Drumgold has now been excused from the witness box, but is likely to return for cross-examination at a later time.
The board of inquiry resumes on Monday morning, with Whybrow, Lehrmann’s defence barrister, set to be called to the witness box.
• 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 500 2222. In the US, Rainn offers support on 800-656-4673. Other international helplines can be found at ibiblio.org/rcip/internl.html
