Well, well, well: Brittany Higgins was “unavailable to take the stand” yesterday.
The first week certainly did not go at all well for the former public servant who claims she was raped by a colleague at Parliament House in 2019. The case became a cause celebre for the left and the bourgeois feminist set, and not insubstantially contributed to the Morrison government’s downfall. But Higgins still has to convince a jury, even in a city full of left-wing public servants, that her accused, Bruce Lehmann, is guilty.
Lehmann denies the charge, or that he even had sex with Higgins at all.
It’s an understatement to say that her first week of evidence did not go entirely swimmingly.
On Friday, [Lehmann’s barrister, Steven Whybrow] accused Ms Higgins of making up the rape allegation because she was scared that she too would lose her “dream job”.
Mr Whybrow also suggested to Ms Higgins that she did not visit a doctor in the days after the alleged sexual assault because it never happened. “The reason you didn’t go to a doctor is because you hadn’t had sex with anybody on the Friday night consensual or otherwise,” he said.
Ms Higgins angrily rejected that proposition, saying it was “deeply insulting” and “not true”.
What’s not in dispute is that Higgins and Lehmann were let into Parliament House by a security guard at about 1.40 am on 23 March 2019, after a night of heavy drinking, and that Lehmann left alone in the early hours, while Higgins remained until 10 am.
On Friday, Mr Whybrow also revealed that Ms Higgins had repeatedly refused to hand her phone over to police for forensic examination after going public with her allegations in early 2021 and only did so after deleting texts, photos and audio files.
The Australian
Whybrow also revealed that, although Higgins had told Federal Police, more than a week after the alleged assault, that “she had attended a medical centre and had tests done after the alleged assault, but that no results had come back yet”, she had done no such thing.
Ms Higgins said she had an intention to do that but did not follow through.
The Australian
Two weeks later, Higgins told dedicated sexual assault detectives at the Belconnen police station that she did not intend to proceed with a complaint.
But by January 2021, Higgins was speaking to the media instead, recording an interview with The Project’s Lisa Wilkinson and “war gaming” with a PR consultant on how to handle the media when the story emerged.
It was nearly a week after the lengthy Project interview before Higgins contacted police again, asking if her “case file still exists”.
Ms Higgins denied trying to obtain her file so that she could provide it to journalists […]
On February 15, 2021, her story was published in News Corp publications and broadcast on The Project that evening.
The court heard that after the story broke that morning, Ms Higgins was involved in circulating to journalists a timeline of events she had prepared.
That wasn’t all she was doing. The trial has also heard that at the same time, Higgins was pursuing a lucrative book deal, with the aid of Wilkinson’s husband, Peter FitzSimons.
The court heard that in mid-March 2021, FitzSimons told Ms Higgins that a publisher was willing to pay $325,000 to publish her story […]
The court heard that police repeatedly asked Ms Higgins to provide them with her mobile phone between February and May, 2021, and that before finally handing it over she had “scrubbed” it of “all of the horrible parts of my life”, but denied she was trying to hide anything from the officers.
The Australian
The “horrible parts” apparently included a text exchange with a Parliamentary security guard.
Ms Higgins sent messages to Alex Woods, a security guard who worked at Parliament House, hours after she left on the morning of the alleged rape on March 23.
She said she and Mr Woods often texted and had a “flirtation” although had never actually dated.
The court heard the text messages were deleted […]
Ms Higgins declined to hand her phone over to police on a number of occasions after the story of her alleged rape was published.
The Australian
Lehmann’s lawyer has also caught Higgins out on another key detail.
Mr Whybrow also grilled Ms Higgins about the time frame she gave to the court about the dress she wore on the night of the incident.
Earlier, she had told the court she kept the white cocktail dress in a plastic bag under her bed, hidden for a period of six months.
But the jury was shown a picture of Ms Higgins wearing the dress as a dinner for senator Linda Reynolds birthday while on the campaign in Perth – less than three weeks after the alleged assault.
The Australian
The trial will resume this week… some time.