Five weeks in the WA Supreme Court, legal fees likely to be in the hundreds of thousands of dollars and two women who have potentially both lost their homes and careers. These are just some of the costs of the high-stakes defamation trial that has played out in Perth over the course of the past month or so and pitched one bitterly aggrieved woman against another. In one corner is Linda Reynolds, a WA senator for a decade and a trailblazing brigadier in the Australian Army Reserve, whose distress and hurt led her to sue for defamation. In the other is Brittany Higgins, once a junior staffer in Senator Reynolds’s office, whose dream job turned into a nightmare when she was allegedly raped in her workplace by colleague Bruce Lehrmann on March 23, 2019, and whose social media posts are the focus of the court case. Mr Lehrmann was charged with rape but a criminal trial was abandoned due to juror misconduct. He has always denied the charge, but in the Federal Court, Justice Michael Lee found he did rape Ms Higgins on the balance of probabilities, in his ruling on a defamation action Mr Lehrmann took against Channel 10 and journalist Lisa Wilkinson, who were among the first to report the sexual assault. Mr Lehrmann has lodged an appeal against that ruling. But this trial hasn’t been about what did or did not happen on the night in question – it has instead focused on the aftermath, and how both women conducted themselves in the weeks, months and years following. Trial triggered by two posts Being a defamation trial, the onus of proof is not on Senator Reynolds, even though she’s the one who accused Ms Higgins of defaming her. Instead, it is up to Ms Higgins to show that the social media posts Senator Reynolds has objected to did not constitute defamation. The two posts in question, published on Instagram on July 4 last year and on Twitter (now X) on July 20, 2023, have long since been deleted by Ms Higgins. Indeed, it’s hard to imagine that most people would even have remembered them had they not been thrust back into the public arena by Senator Reynolds’s legal proceedings. Bringing the matter into the realm of the courts has been costly for both sides – both emotionally and financially — and is a calculated gamble on the part of Senator Reynolds. She’s counting on the court vindicating her and restoring what she believes is her damaged reputation. But even if she wins this case, it’s an issue that seems to have polarised public opinion and a favourable court judgement might not be enough to achieve that aim given what’s been aired in court over the past few weeks. Relieving trauma in an open court Launching defamation proceedings has meant both women have had to repeatedly relive their trauma over what happened in the aftermath of that fateful night in Parliament House in 2019. Senator Reynolds gave five days of sometimes anguished testimony, leaving little doubt that the saga has left her emotionally bruised and physically drained. “Like a fairground punching clown,” is how she put it at one point in her evidence. The long-term physical effects have also been profound, with Senator Reynolds blaming the stress of the events for the emergence of a previously undiagnosed heart condition that means she must now take medication and travel with a blood pressure monitor. She feels she’s been painted as the villain in the piece, as an unsupportive boss who forced her staffer to spend six weeks away from friends and family on the campaign trail just weeks after allegedly being raped. She’s also angry at the Albanese government’s $2.4 million personal injury settlement with Ms Higgins, a process from which she believes she was deliberately excluded, and one that she has referred to the National Anti-Corruption Commission. The court case has given Senator Reynolds an opportunity to vent her feelings both in the witness box and through her formidable lawyer Martin Bennett, whose considerable persuasive and analytical skills have helped shape a forceful case against Ms Higgins. But however justified Senator Reynolds feels and however persuasive Mr Bennett’s arguments might be, suing a high-profile rape victim runs the risk of public backlash, despite her avowed aim of restoring her reputation. Lopsided case without Higgins testimony Ms Higgins elected not to testify and subject herself to cross-examination from Mr Bennett — an apprehensive enough proposition for most people let alone someone who would have had to fly halfway across the world to do so while pregnant. This has meant the case has been somewhat lopsided – we’ve heard five days of evidence from Senator Reynolds and nearly two dozen witnesses called by her legal team, but no firsthand account from Ms Higgins explaining her actions. Loading… From Ms Higgins’s lawyer Rachael Young we’ve heard her side of the story — and how she feels the social media posts in question were simply telling the truth. The court heard that in Ms Higgins’s view, Senator Reynolds mishandled the rape allegations, failed to support her and continued to harass her in the subsequent years. Ms Young has painted a picture of a vulnerable young rape victim who was abandoned by her boss in her hour of need, who was instead handed a brochure about employee counselling and told to report her allegations to the Australian Federal Police. She said when Ms Higgins aired her allegations two years later on national television, Senator Reynolds branded her then 26-year-old former staffer a “lying cow”, then leaked confidential information about Ms Higgins’s Commonwealth settlement to selected journalists. Offhand comments unearthed As well as reminding us all of that infamous comment, the defamation action has unearthed some other aspects of Senator Reynolds’s actions that reflect on her conduct during that period. Ms Higgins “had a predilection for expensive clothes, including my jacket”, the senator said under questioning from Ms Young, alluding to a Carla Zampatti jacket the staffer was pictured by security cameras wearing as she left Parliament House on the night she was allegedly raped. Not only did she accuse Ms Higgins of stealing the jacket, in text messages during Mr Lehrmann’s rape trial (later aborted) she also made comments about Ms Higgins’s attire that Senator Reynolds admitted were probably “catty”. During a series of text messages with Mr Lehrmann’s lawyer Stephen Whybrow, Senator Reynolds compared Ms Higgins’s fashion sense to that of the Princess of Wales, telling the court it had “annoyed me greatly” seeing Ms Higgins dressed like Catherine Middleton. Questioned about her selective leaking of details of the $2.4 million payout, a defiant Senator Reynolds said she never agreed to keep it under wraps and felt she had every right to use the information as she saw fit. Proceedings winding down It’s still unusual in Australia for MPs to resort to defamation proceedings, since parliamentary privilege allows them to speak freely in the parliament without fear of legal action. Some have argued this might have been a better avenue for Senator Reynolds to air her grievances and state her case, especially since the matter was already a matter of fierce debate within the chamber. Senator Reynolds is retiring at the end of next year having chosen not to recontest her seat, a decision she blames squarely on the stress of Ms Higgins’s allegations. So she’s exiting the public stage in any event, regardless of Justice Paul Tottle’s decision on her defamation action. It’s her legacy she wants to protect and her reputation she wants to restore, mindful of her future employment prospects. But whatever the outcome, some may find it hard to get past the optics of suing a young woman who was found, on the balance of probabilities, to have been raped in her parliamentary office and is clearly still suffering from what happened to her. A ruling in Senator Reynolds’s favour by Justice Tottle may prove to be a pyrrhic victory in the court of public opinion. Five weeks of hearings are scheduled to end on Wednesday, after Ms Young and Mr Bennett make their closing submissions. Justice Tottle will then retire to consider his verdict, a process that could take weeks or months. 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