Brittany Higgins seemed “broken”, “unfamiliar” and “frozen in what had happened to her” in the period after her alleged rape in parliament house, her mother, friends and colleagues have told a court.
Bruce Lehrmann has pleaded not guilty to sexual intercourse without consent in relation to the events of 23 March 2019.
The ACT supreme court this week heard from a string of witnesses who testified they were close to Higgins, or said Higgins had disclosed her alleged rape to them. Their evidence was temporarily suppressed until Higgins, who was unavailable for several days, concluded her cross-examination on Friday.
One colleague, Christopher Payne, a public servant who worked with Higgins for then defence industry minister Linda Reynolds, told the court on Tuesday Higgins disclosed the allegations to him within “a matter of days” and told him she “could not have consented”.
Higgins had come into his part of the office visibly upset, he told the court. He said Higgins told him she had returned to Parliament House with Lehrmann in an Uber after a night out drinking, entered the office and blacked out.
Higgins told him she woke to find Lehrmann on top of her, having sex with her, Payne told the court.
“She was very upset so I waited for her to regain her composure,” he said. “Once I had done that, I said to her … ‘Do you mind if I ask you a very direct question? Did he rape you?’
“And she said, ‘I could not have consented, it would have been like fucking a log,’ and at that point she was very upset again.”
Payne told the court he remembered firmly advising Higgins to see a doctor and go to police, and offering to take her immediately. She declined, he said. Under cross-examination, Payne agreed that before he spoke to Higgins the office’s chief of staff, Fiona Brown, had told him Higgins had been found in a “state of undress”.
Higgins’ mother, Kelly Higgins, told the court on Wednesday her daughter told her of the alleged rape in November 2019, during a dinner in Queensland.
Her daughter had seemed “quite broken” and was “not the same person” in the period after the alleged rape, she said.
“She was almost unfamiliar in her emotional state,” she said. “She was almost unfamiliar in her character.
“Like, she was just so frozen in what had happened to her.”
Also on Wednesday Ben Dillaway, a fellow political staffer who was close to Higgins, told the court she seemed “broken” in the period after the alleged rape. Dillaway said Higgins became distraught whenever he asked her about the night.
“It was like a light had turned off in her,” he said. “She was a broken, shattered person, I would say.”
The court also heard from Higgins’ then roommate, Alexandra Humphreys.
Humphreys, a nurse, said Higgins had been “bubbly”, lovely and excited to have won her dream job when she first moved into the Canberra home in early 2019.
Her demeanour changed significantly before she began work on the May 2019 federal election, the court heard.
“She stayed in her room a lot, and for the last couple of months that she lived with us anyway, it was really hard to get her out for social events,” Humphreys said.
“She didn’t really come to a lot of social gatherings after that, she kept to herself. And I tried.”
Earlier, Austin Wenke, a former media adviser to Peter Dutton, who was drinking with Lehrmann and Higgins on the night, gave evidence.
He repeatedly said he could not remember details of the night, including his level of intoxication, or that of Higgins and Lehrmann.
The trial continues in the ACT supreme court.
