Former defence minister Linda Reynolds must have known Brittany Higgins had been sexually assaulted when she met with her junior staffer, a defamation trial has been told.
Reynolds is suing Higgins over a series of social media posts she says damaged her reputation as she pursues vindication for a series of alleged mistruths.
Among them is the senator mishandled Higgins’ rape allegation by failing to support the then 24-year-old.
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Senator Reynolds says she was not aware Higgins had been raped when the pair met on April 1, 2019, eight days after the alleged incident.
Higgins’ lawyer Rachael Young SC told the court today the claim wasn’t credible.
“It became increasingly clear that Ms Higgins was in significant distress,” she told the Western Australian Supreme Court during her opening submissions.
“Her (alleged) rapist had been fired.
“The notion that the senator had no suspicion of any criminal activity … On the evidence that will not pass muster.
“She ought to have known or believed or suspected, that Ms Higgins had been sexually assaulted.”
Young said Reynolds already knew Higgins was found naked on a couch in the ministerial suite after Bruce Lehrmann “fled” Parliament House when the pair met.
“The senator did not tell Ms Higgins everything that she had learned,” she said.
“We say also that the senator suggested to Ms Higgins that she was not the right person to be talking about it.
“So that’s not the right response of an employer, and suggesting that Ms Higgins go and speak to someone else about it, effectively telling her to go elsewhere is not supportive and is not handling the allegation correctly.”
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Higgins is using the defence of truth to fight Reynolds’ defamation claim.
After the trial opened on Friday, Reynolds’ lawyer Martin Bennett robustly defended her actions following Higgins’ alleged rape.
He said accusations of ill-treatment, ostracism, bullying, harassment and threatening conduct by the senator were a fiction concocted by Higgins and her now husband David Sharaz.
“Every fairy tale needs a villain” and Higgins and Sharaz “cast Reynolds in that role for their fictional story of political cover-up of the rape,” Bennett told the court.
“She was cast in … critical light and none of it was true.”
He noted Reynolds had never disputed Higgins’ rape allegation and pointed to Higgins’ personal injury claim, over alleged mishandling of the incident, which the Commonwealth settled for $2.4 million in late 2022.
“The claims made by Higgins were false and Reynolds was denied the appropriate venue, the appropriate time, the appropriate funding by the Commonwealth to defend the actions of herself and her staff,” he said.
Higgins and Sharaz created a detailed plan in 2020 and 2021, which she recorded on her phone as “the cult of politics, the media lens of a political sex scandal, anatomy of a political sex scandal”, Bennett said.
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The trial is set down for about five weeks and high-profile witnesses including former prime minister Scott Morrison, former foreign minister Marise Payne, and WA Liberal Senator Michaelia Cash are expected to appear.
Reynolds is scheduled to take the witness stand today after Higgins’ lawyer completes her submissions.
Higgins is expected to give evidence in the last week of August.
Lehrmann has always denied sexually assaulting Higgins. His criminal trial was aborted because of juror misconduct and Higgins’ mental health was cited as the reason for no retrial.
In a separate defamation case a judge in 2024 found Lehrmann did – on the balance of probabilities – rape Higgins but there was little evidence of a cover-up.
Support is available from the National Sexual Assault, Domestic Family Violence Counselling Service at 1800RESPECT (1800 737 732)
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