Photograph: Mick Tsikas/AAP
The judge who oversaw the trial of Bruce Lehrmann feared that the media frenzy directed at Brittany Higgins carried “a risk to her life”, a newly released judgment shows.
On Monday, the ACT supreme court chief justice Lucy McCallum published her reasons for maintaining a number of suppression orders over aspects of the case, which were challenged by media outlets following the conclusion of criminal proceedings.
One of those suppression orders concerned an application made by Lehrmann on 22 November, a month after the trial collapsed due to juror misconduct but before prosecutors announced their decision not to pursue a retrial.
The nature of Lehrmann’s application still cannot be published. When he first made it in November, McCallum said she needed to prohibit any reporting of it to safeguard the then planned retrial from any prejudice.
When the retrial was dropped in early December, media outlets asked her to revisit the suppression, but the chief justice decided to maintain the restrictions, saying she did not wish to add to the “media frenzy” surrounding the case.
She said further reporting posed a real risk to Higgins’ welfare.
“Based on my experience of the trial, which included the provision of a medical certificate when the complainant became unavailable to continue her evidence, my own observations of the complainant and the information provided to me by the [director of public prosecutions] yesterday concerning her current medical condition, I have no doubt that any further exacerbation of the level of media attention directed to her carries a risk to her life,” McCallum ruled.
“My view on that issue is not altered by the fact that she herself has made press statements. I do not think that indicates that one can compartmentalise the areas in which she is vulnerable and the areas in which she is not.”
“I am simply not prepared to contribute to the media frenzy that has been this case.”
She said that allowing the media access to material linked to Lehrmann’s application would give the media a “new story or a new slant”.
“Based on my assessment of the application and the affidavit, it is my firm view that publication of that material would give the media a new story or a new slant that would inevitably result in further harm to the complainant, and that is not a step I am prepared to take,” McCallum ruled.
McCallum also maintained a suppression over the reasons Lehrmann’s counsel was unavailable in May, prompting a short delay to the trial, and over the contents of certain documents linked to the trial. She lifted a suppression on reporting of the reasons Higgins was absent for some days during the trial.
McCallum’s reasons for maintaining the suppression orders, given on 2 December, had themselves not been published until Monday.
They were published after an application to vary the orders slightly, which prompted a brief hearing in the ACT supreme court on Monday afternoon. McCallum then decided she could publish a redacted form of her earlier reasons.
Lehrmann pleaded not guilty to one charge of sexual intercourse without consent and has maintained his innocence.
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