Alex Eggerking says her treatment as a staffer to one of Australia's most powerful judges killed her faith in the legal profession, but she wants other people who have been sexually harassed to know that they can heal.
The role of a young associate to a High Court judge is unique and unusual.
Their tasks include intense and cerebral ones, like helping proof read a judgement for court.
However, they also include the more mundane and somewhat arcane.
"Making him cups of tea with the teabag dunked 10 times: The way the associate's manual handed down year, to year, to year, described [how] he liked his tea," Ms Eggerking recalls.
"You're sort of expected to smooth the judge's path through life."
Ms Eggerking was 23 when she was chosen as an associate to the then 68-year-old High Court justice Dyson Heydon in the 2011 intake.
The positions are highly prized, and considered a gateway to a career at the heights of the legal profession — the "absolute pinnacle job" — Ms Eggerking says.
Ms Eggerking was one of six women whose allegations of being sexually harassed by the former judge were independently investigated by Dr Vivienne Thom on behalf of the High Court of Australia.
In June 2020, the court's Chief Justice Susan Kiefel announced the investigation had found the women were harassed by Justice Heydon. She apologised to them on behalf of the court.
At the time, the retired judge released a statement through his lawyers denying "emphatically, any allegation of sexual harassment or any offence" as well as "any allegation of predatory behaviour or breaches of the law".
The statement said Dyson Heydon apologised for any inadvertent or unintended offence caused, and also noted that the inquiry was "an internal administrative inquiry and was conducted by a public servant and not by a lawyer, judge or a tribunal member".
"It was conducted without having statutory powers of investigation and of administering affirmations or oaths," the statement said.
This week, the Commonwealth reached a financial settlement with three of the women involved, including Ms Eggerking.
'I felt trapped'
On Ms Eggerking's third day of work at the High Court, celebratory drinks were to be held in the library to welcome the new associates.
Ms Eggerking then recalls going back to the judge's chambers to finish some work on a trolley of documents that the judge would need in court the next day.
She says Heydon hung around while she finished her work.
He asked her whether she had eaten and whether she would like to have dinner. Ms Eggerking says the judge had been drinking, so she drove them to a restaurant in the city.
"And it was [a] perfectly professional and innocuous conversation, you know, talking about the court, talking about the law, talking about being an associate."
On the car ride back to the judge's Canberra lodgings, the Commonwealth Club, he started asking her to come inside and take a look around.
Ms Eggerking had thought the Commonwealth Club was a men's only club, but was mistaken.
"I wasn't particularly well versed in these things. He said, 'Oh, no, it's not. So why don't you come in and have a look?' I can't remember what his stronger arguments were than that," she says.
"I sort of reasoned, 'Well, nothing's happened so far, maybe I'm overthinking this. There'll be people inside. It's a public place.
"I really [didn't] know how to say no to this High Court judge – who's my boss of three days – who's quite, you know, intimidating and scary in the sense of powerful, and I would have to work with him for a whole year.
"So I remember not wanting to go inside. But I remember taking only my valuables and leaving my bag in the car, and saying I would just come inside for a quick look.
"I didn't want to see his desk. And I felt, at that point, as though he was trying to manipulate me into a situation where I might be alone with him.
"I became very uncomfortable.
"He had this very quiet presence … that didn't take a lot of argument, and he sort of stood there waiting for me to follow him.
"I can see his silhouette standing in the doorway to the next room and I can hear his voice saying – he has quite a quiet voice – saying, 'Close the door'.
"I didn't want to close the door. Everything felt totally turned on its head. I closed the door.
"Once I closed the door, I could see that I was in his bedroom. And that's when I really started to panic. There's no desk in there.
Alex says she opened the door, told the judge she had to go, and fled.
"I was terrified. I felt violated. I felt manipulated. And I felt trapped. And I had a question afterwards, which was, 'What if I hadn't got out?' And all of those feelings have stayed in my body and they're still there," she recalls.
'No-one leaves'
That was her third day at work.
"On my fourth day of work, I was so distraught … and I had to turn around, put a smile on my face and serve him a cup of tea," Ms Eggerking says.
Her deep love of the law started to unravel. But she did not leave right away.
"I thought about leaving. I thought, 'How on earth can I stay and work in this position with this man, who I now don't respect at all, let alone feel safe around'?" she recalls.
"So my co-associate and I came up with strategies to manage my being in chambers and around the judge for the year."
As her year as an associate came to an end, she considered her options.
"A lot of my fellow associates around the court were making plans to study at Oxford and Cambridge or Harvard or Columbia, you know, to continue their path towards going to be barristers, or academics, or whatever it is they wanted to be," she says.
"To do all of those things, you need a reference from your judge.
"I decided at some point during that year that I would not — not ever — seek a reference from Dyson Heydon.
Ms Eggerking moved to a corporate law firm with a good culture that made her feel safe, where she would work for three or four more years before deciding to leave the law altogether.
She had gone from feeling "starstruck" on her first day at the High Court to feeling disillusioned about the whole system.
Along the way, she had lost respect for other judges, for barristers, for the legal profession at large. She had fallen "out of love" with it all.
She would later be diagnosed with PTSD by a forensic psychiatrist during the course of the Commonwealth compensation process.
Now, Ms Eggerking has a message for other people who have been harassed.
"It's possible for you to move through the shame, and the silence, and the feelings of fear and voicelessness and reconnect with yourself again. Because that is the most important thing.
"It is possible to hold people … to account, though it's incredibly bloody hard and incredibly draining."
And she has a different message for Dyson Heydon:
"Dyson, you ruined my career. You destroyed my love for the law," she says.
"You destroyed my faith in legal institutions and the legal and the legal profession.
"You made me feel viscerally unsafe on my third day of working for you.
"You made me feel worthless.
"You treated me like I was an object that you could use when you wanted to with impunity.
"Strong, courageous, vulnerable, bloody determined women stood up and said, 'That's enough. This is what happened to me, and you won't get away with it.'"
Watch Alex Eggerking's interview with 7.30 on ABC iview
