#Bruce Lehrmann

[i-remain-convinced]

"Conclusion: having escaped the lion's den, Mr Lehrmann made the mistake of coming back for his hat."

-Justice Michael Lee

[theshampyon]

The Chaser killing it again with their headlines. No more alleged, hello 'Proven To A Civil Standard Rapist Bruce Lehrmann'.

Even better when you remember he and Channel 7 paid hundreds of thousands of dollars for this outcome. Just like with 'Proven To A Civil Standard War Criminal Ben Roberts-Smith'. If I didn't know any better I'd think 7 were doing it on purpose.

[alexanderpearce]

"Having escaped the lion's den, Mr Lehrmann made the mistake of coming back for his hat."

[warningsine]

Bruce Lehrmann has lost his defamation case against Network Ten and Lisa Wilkinson, bringing to an end a sprawling legal saga which has gripped the nation.

In a live oral summary that took two and a half hours, Justice Michael Lee said the former Liberal staffer was not defamed by Wilkinson and Ten when The Project broadcast an interview with Brittany Higgins on Monday 15 February 2021 in which she alleged she was raped in Parliament House.

He found that on the balance of probabilities Lehrmann raped Higgins on the minister’s couch in Parliament House in 2019.

“In summary, I consider it more likely than not in those early hours, after a long night of conviviality and drinking and having successfully brought Ms Higgins back to a secluded place, Mr Lehrmann was hellbent on having sex with a woman he found attractive” and knew was inebriated, Lee said.

“He did not care one way or the other whether Ms Higgins understood or agreed to what was going on.”

Lee said of Lehrmann’s decision to bring the civil case against Channel Ten and Wilkinson, after his criminal trial was aborted due to juror misconduct: “Having escaped the lion’s den, Mr Lehrmann made the mistake of going back for his hat.”

Lehrmann denied the rape allegations and pleaded not guilty at his trial in the Australian Capital Territory supreme court which was aborted. Prosecutors did not seek a retrial due to concerns about Higgins’s mental health.

Lehrmann and Wilkinson were both in court for the decision. Lehrmann sat with his head bowed for most of the proceedings, rarely looking up to where Lee sat issuing a judgment that was at times scathing of Lehrmann and his truthfulness.

“To remark that Mr Lehrmann was a poor witness is an exercise in understatement,” Lee said in his first few minutes of the judgment.

Both Lehrmann and Wilkinson were in court for most of the five-week trial, sitting at opposite ends of the courtroom.

The full judgment has been published online.

Lee was, however, critical of the conduct of Channel Ten’s The Project team, saying “the rape allegations were intertwined with the cover-up and the Project team had strong indications of the unreliability of their main source, particularly as to how she lost material on her phone and selected material survived”.

He also criticised their approach to seeking comment from Lehrmann: “If Network Ten wanted to get in contact with Mr Lehrmann, there were ways of ensuring that contact could be achieved. He was not living the life of a hermit.”

Lee said the case functioned as a “Rorschach test” for some observers.

“For more than a few, this dispute has become a proxy for broader cultural and political conflicts.”

In The Project interview, Higgins told Wilkinson she was sexually assaulted on a couch in the office of her then boss, former defence industry minister Linda Reynolds, in the early hours of Saturday 23 March 2019.

The Project did not name Lehrmann as the Liberal staffer at the heart of the allegation but Lee found he was identifiable in the broadcast.

In February 2023, after his criminal trial was abandoned, Lehrmann began legal action against Network Ten in the federal court.

In the judgment Lee said Ten and Wilkinson had proved the imputation he raped Higgins was true on the balance of probabilities.

The applicant has always denied raping Higgins or having any sexual relations with her at all.

“Did you sexually assault Brittany Higgins in that office on that evening?” his barrister, Steven Whybrow SC, asked during the trial in December last year.

“Absolutely not,” Lehrmann replied.

In the witness box over five days Lehrmann admitted telling three different stories – including two that were lies – about the reason for his after-hours visit to Parliament House with Higgins after a night out in Canberra.

Lee was scathing of Lehrmann’s explanations that he returned to the minister’s office to retrieve his keys, detailing the complicated process involved in getting through Parliament House security: “I think it is safe to conclude that the process of getting into a flat he shared with his girlfriend would have been a significantly less elaborate exercise,” he said scornfully.

He also dismissed as “fanciful” the idea that Lehrmann, having been out drinking and “accompanied by a woman he found attractive” went to the office at nearly 2am “to note up briefs for a Question Time that was not to occur for one and a half weeks” especially when Lehrmann “hitherto had demonstrated no outward signs of being a workaholic”.

He told Lee he must have been “mistaken” when he told the Australian federal police he did not have any alcohol in his office. Under cross-examination he conceded he had multiple bottles of whisky and gin at the time.

When the defence presented its case, the court heard Higgins weighed 60kg at the time of the alleged rape and an expert testified that a woman of her size would have likely had a blood alcohol concentration of 0.23% at the time of the alleged rape.

Higgins was in the witness box for four days during which she became emotional as she recounted in graphic detail her alleged rape, as well as the deterioration of her relationship with her employer after she reported the alleged incident.

“As I was being raped, it wasn’t my primary concern where my dress was … I was deeply more concerned about the penis in my vagina that I didn’t want than I was about my dress,” Higgins said through tears.

Lehrmann maintains his innocence. In the criminal trial in 2022 he pleaded not guilty to one charge of sexual intercourse without consent, denying that any sexual activity occurred.

In December of that year prosecutors dropped charges against him for the alleged rape of Higgins, saying a retrial would pose an “unacceptable risk” to her health.

Lee noted that if Lehrmann had won he would have been entitled to damages of $20,000.

The parties have until 22 April to file submissions for costs.

[randomspirit]

"Having escaped the lion's den, Mr Lehrmann made the mistake of coming back for his hat."

Justice Lee, 2024

[claredanko]

okay i have to give it to the courier mail this headline rules

[m-ultraarticles]

Bruce Lehrmann's lawyer accuses chief prosecutor of 'aligning' himself with Brittany Higgins

Bruce Lehrmann’s lawyer has taken another swipe at the conduct of the ACT’s chief prosecutor, accusing Shane Drumgold of “aligning” himself with Brittany Higgins. At an inquiry examining how the case was handled, Steven Whybrow said he wasn’t happy with a public statement given by Drumgold on the day the DPP announced it would not proceed with a retrial. Bruce Lehrmann’s lawyer accused the…

[rf-times]

My mum and I cried this morning hearing about the Bruce Lehrmann case being dismissed. For non-Australians, this is a highly publicised trial where a political staffer raped a woman in a parlimentary office that she came out publicly about in 2019. The government closed ranks against this woman and the media was whipped into a frenzy of victim blaming to the point where the woman has become so extremely traumatised that she is in hospital and the prosecuters have made the decision to throw out the case because of the damage the trial is doing to her. We live in a country where women cannot get justice when they are raped.

Edit: I got the rapist’s first name wrong

[disillusionedmonster]

BRUCE LEHRMANN LOST!! SUCK FUCKING SHIT RAPIST SCUM!! Maybe you shouldn't have been a greedy fucking bastard. Fuck you!!

So happy for Higgins!!

[chloe-brennan]

the verdict in the bruce lehrmann case is a bright spark amongst such a dark few days for australia

[diabetesnscoliosis]

Happy you can legally call Bruce Lehrmann a rapist day

[radlymona]

I hope AMCA investigates the Channel 7/Spotlight interview with Bruce Lehrmann. I think if Lisa Wilkinson has spent the last three years having her name dragged through the mud and her credibility as a journalist destroyed, it’s only fair that Spotlight producers and interviewers face that exact same public scrutiny

[parsleypesto]

bruce lehrmann fucked himself so hard lmaooooo

[theshampyon]

Brittany Higgins was and still is being dragged through the mud in the court of public opinion for her accusations of rape against Bruce Lehrmann. She was called a liar and a slut, accused of trying to destroy a good man's reputation, and of trying to put an innocent man in jail. Her phone records were leaked. Her private diary entries were leaked. Her privileged information was wrongly handed to Lehrmann's team by the police. There was only one juror who was holding out on finding Lehrmann guilty, and that same juror caused a mistrial. The overall stress of all this bullshit pushed Higgins to the point that the prosecutor decided to stop pursuing a retrial against Lehrmann for the sake of her health. In the wake of that, Lehrman has filed suit against her boyfriend and news outlets that reported on the case. She has, in the end, gotten nothing - worse than nothing - for her decision to come forward. And now a second woman has come forward accusing Bruce Lehrmann of the same crime.

To my mind, a reasonable person would see that and come to the opinion that these women are telling the truth. Or that they believe they are. At the very least it should be clear that there is no profit for the women in this situation, no reward high enough to balance the absolute shitshow that going public with a rape accusation brings into their lives. But, somehow, there are some people who see all this and think the first woman was a conniving liar, and the second one saw all the hell she went through and concluded "That looks fun and profitable, let me have a turn!" It's the most illogical, unreasonable, utterly bizarre conclusion you could reach based on the evidence at hand. And yet it is an absurdly popular one.

[coolasakuhncumber]

I did not feel an emotion for a week after the news. Things happened where I should have felt something. I achieved some great things at work and nothing. A friend shared good news with me and I flashed the smile and made the happy exclamations but I did not feel the joy. People were stabbed, were killed, in a Bondi shopping centre and I did not have the emotional resources to do anything more than vaguely acknowledge it had happened. Bruce Lehrmann lost his defamation case and nothing. The sun spent a week rising and setting and I went about the motions but I had no feeling.

I think my brain shut down emotional understanding and processing in lieu of surviving.

I did not feel an emotion for a week but my goodness were there occasions of unprompted tears and that's a sign of a feeling, right?

I've started feeling things again.