Former Liberal staffer Fiona Brown was dramatically compelled to give evidence in Bruce Lehrmann’s defamation trial on Monday on the proviso the federal court’s live stream was disabled while she was in the witness box.
Brown was Senator Linda Reynolds’ chief of staff at the time Brittany Higgins claims Lehrmann raped her on the ministerial couch, and was the first person to interview both of them. She took contemporaneous notes.
Earlier, a request from Brown’s lawyer for her client’s subpoena to be discharged on medical grounds was rejected by justice Michael Lee.
Lee said he read the medical reports and, while they were “concerning”, they did not reach the level of making her incapable of giving evidence.
The court sat until 7.45pm and was closed to all but legal counsel and the media. Brown was asked about her meetings with Lehrmann and Higgins in the days after the alleged rape.
Brown’s meeting with Higgins took place after she met with Lehrmann, who had immediately packed up his desk and left.
Brown denied that Higgins cried during the meeting.
“She just had a little bit of water in her eyes,” Brown said, adding that she handed her a tissue as well as a brochure for the employee assistance program, which is a counselling service available to staff.
Lisa Wilkinson’s barrister, Sue Chrysanthou SC, asked Brown about the meeting with Lehrmann.
Brown said she asked him if he accessed documents in secure areas when he entered parliament that night, and that he had told her he did not.
“I was puzzled,” she said.
Chrysanthou asked Brown if she thought Lehrmann was lying to her when he said he went back there to drink whisky.
Brown said: “I had no reason to think he was lying. I accepted what everyone said to me.”
However, Brown said of Lehrmann’s explanation: “It seemed off to me. One thought I had was had he come back here to access files. My antenna was up.”
Chrysanthou asked Brown if she asked Lehrmann any questions about Higgins being found naked. Brown said “I may have”, but she didn’t recall. It wasn’t in the notes she made of the meeting.
Chrysanthou asked: “Wasn’t it the most important point?”
Brown responded: “I’m not an investigator, I’m there asking questions put to me by the Department of Finance. I was limited by that.
“It’s quite possible I mentioned it. I don’t know if I would have said ‘naked’ to him. I’m sorry, it’s been a very traumatic time.”
The judge intervened and asked Brown: “You knew their age, you knew they came back intoxicated, you understood they’d been drinking whisky, and you understood she’d been found naked. Putting those things together, would it be right to say you think it would be more likely than not they had had sex?”
Brown: “I wouldn’t say more likely than not. It was possible.”
Chrysanthou asked Brown if she accepted that she should not have conducted the interviews with the two staff members. Brown disagreed, saying: “It wasn’t considered assault [at that point in time].”
“It was a staff matter of people coming in after hours,” Brown said, noting she was asked by the department to talk to the pair.
Brown was asked about a further meeting she had with Higgins on Thursday 28 March, five days after the alleged rape.
“I asked her if something had happened she didn’t want to have happen,” Brown said. She said Higgins replied: “I am responsible for what I drink and my actions.”
Brown said that during this second meeting Higgins said she remembered Lehrmann on top of her, and that she said this in a casual manner.
Brown said she was shocked by this, but didn’t understand what Higgins was telling her.
“I did not know what she meant by that,” Brown said.
On Monday morning the Queensland state MP Sam O’Connor said Higgins told him Lehrmann had raped her.
O’Connor is the LNP member for Bonney on the Gold Coast and he knew Higgins before she moved to Canberra. He received a text message from Higgins on 29 March 2019 saying she had a “super fucked up thing” happen to her and he called her.
O’Connor told the court: “She told me that he [Lehrmann] had taken her back to Parliament House and that he had raped her.”
“I absolutely remember the word rape,” he said. “That’s not something that you forget. And she absolutely did say that. He had taken her back to Parliament House; something under the guise of having to drop in there or something.”
Lehrmann has always denied the rape allegation and in a previous criminal trial about the matter pleaded not guilty to one charge of sexual intercourse without consent, denying that any sexual activity had occurred.
The criminal trial was aborted after it was discovered a juror had conducted their own research in relation to the case and had taken the document into the deliberation room.
In December prosecutors dropped charges against Lehrmann for the alleged rape of Higgins, saying a retrial would pose an “unacceptable risk” to her health.
Lee, the judge, said despite some criticism on social media that Brown was getting “special treatment” he was “taking appropriate judicial recognition of the evidence” and “ensuring there is public interest in open justice”.
“I’m not going to be responsible for unnecessarily exacerbating people’s mental health issues.
“It’s appropriate for the media to be in the courtroom because it’s abhorrent against every instinct in my body to exclude, to close courts.”
