Brittany Higgins has been sued for speaking up about her alleged rape in parliament house and the need for change, her lawyer has told a defamation trial.
Higgins is battling Senator Linda Reynolds over a series of social media posts that the former defence minister believes damaged her reputation.
The former staffer’s lawyer, Rachael Young, said the senator had repeatedly said she wanted to ensure Higgins’ agency was protected in the days and weeks after she was allegedly raped.
READ MORE: Hundreds evacuated from Sydney apartment building over bin fire
“But Ms Higgins had no agency, when she was raped in March 2019 on the couch in Senator Reynolds’ private office,” she told the Western Australian Supreme Court as she wrapped up her closing submissions today.
“She had little agency when, as a 24-year-old recent employee… met with her boss and her chief of staff around a table near the couch where she was found undressed and where the rape occurred.
“She had no agency when she started to speak about her experience and was told by the senator she was not the right person to talk to.”
Young said Higgins also had no agency when she worked on the senator’s re-election campaign in the months after “absent (from) her support network and being in the awful position of feeling that if she wanted to keep her job she couldn’t talk about her rape”.
“She seized that agency, though, when she decided to speak up about her experience in 2021,” she said.
Young said that in the spirit of recognising Higgins’ agency she would quote her client as she concluded her remarks.
“The prime minister has repeatedly told the parliament that I should be given agency going forward. I don’t believe that agency was provided to me over the past two years,” Young said reading Higgins’ comments following a 2021 meeting with Scott Morrison.
“From the outset, I have been driven by my desire to ensure that no other person would have to go through the trauma that I experienced during my time in parliament house.”
READ MORE: Four men convicted of raping woman at her home after Tinder date
Young said that was Higgins’ motive for speaking up in 2021 when she went public with her accusations against Senator Reynolds and the Morrison government about the mishandling of her alleged rape and a cover-up.
“That’s why she’s been sued and that’s why we say this action should be dismissed,” she said.
Young also said the senator’s accusation that Higgins and her husband David Sharaz engaged in a conspiracy to harm her was made too late and the senator hadn’t proven with evidence that a plan existed.
She said the evidence did not support the conspiracy allegation, nor had the senator established Higgins had a motive to make such a plan and hurt her former boss and bring down the Morrison government.
She also said that even if a motive was established in 2021, it doesn’t mean Higgins acted with malice two years later when she published her social media posts.
“The evidence establishes that Ms Higgins’ motivational purpose was not anywhere close to what is put by the senator with respect to an improper motive to immediately cause political damage upon the senator and then the Morrison government,” she said.
Young also targeted the senator’s claim that Higgins published knowingly false information, such as providing other senators with information that formed the basis of questions in parliament and that she was ostracised by her boss, saying there was no evidence to support it.
“There is a difference between information being incorrect and there being knowing falsity, and there is also a distinction between people recalling it differently,” she said.
“The senator’s real gripe, as we say, the evidence shows is with the 2021 conduct. It’s not with the publications in 2023, surrounded by 2021 conduct.”
Support is available from the National Sexual Assault, Domestic Family Violence Counselling Service at 1800RESPECT (1800 737 732).
links to content on ABC
9News
