A confidant of Brittany Higgins has told a court he approached the prime minister’s office within two weeks of Higgins’ alleged rape after becoming concerned about her mental state, saying “it was like a light had turned off in her”.
The ACT supreme court has also heard that federal agents were initially refused access to CCTV vision in Parliament House from the night Bruce Lehrmann is alleged to have raped Higgins, a decision they say was passed down through the “chain of command”.
Lehrmann has pleaded not guilty to sexual intercourse without consent. This week’s evidence was temporarily suppressed until Higgins, who was unavailable for several days, concluded her cross-examination on Friday.
The ACT supreme court on Wednesday heard from Ben Dillaway, then a fellow Coalition staffer who had a “close personal relationship” with Higgins.
Dillaway said he spoke to Higgins on the day of the alleged rape, 23 March 2019, and asked her about the previous night, when she and others, including Lehrmann, had been drinking at Canberra bars.
He told the court he sensed “something was off straight away” and found it unusual that she had gone back to Parliament House in the early hours of the morning.
When Dillaway asked for more information, he told the court Higgins told him she didn’t want to talk about it, and ended the conversation.
Higgins later alleged to him that she had been raped, and he made plans to come and support her in person in Canberra, he told the court.
He said Higgins was distraught when they met.
“I was basically kind of saying again, ‘So, you know, were you – were you raped?’ And again, she kind of broke down and I just remember her, you know, crying and, you know, really breaking down,” he said. “I kind of just had her in my arms and she was very much what I would say would be a broken person.”
He said he encouraged Higgins to make a report to police. She had been fearful of losing her job, he said, and had not wanted to be “front and centre” in the media.
“It was like a light had turned off in her,” he told the court. “She was a broken, shattered person, I would say.”
Dillaway said he asked Higgins whether he could approach the prime minister’s office to help get more support for her, and she gave him permission to do so.
“I checked multiple times, got her OK before I went out and met with them to kind of get assistance for her,” he said.
He told the court he approached the prime minister’s office on 3 April 2019, about 11 days after the alleged rape, and spoke to Julian Leembruggen, an adviser.
“This was at a stage where, from my recollection, she was struggling significantly, wasn’t coping very well with things,” Dillaway said. “She’d tried to see a psychiatrist and the wait was two months or three months or something, and I said, ‘Let me discreetly go speak to someone in the prime minister’s office, because surely this can move things along, or surely this will get you the help you need.’”
Two federal agents, both based at Parliament House, told the court of their 30-minute interview with Higgins on 1 April 2019, about a week after the alleged rape.
Higgins was “very upset, visibly upset” during the interview, the court heard, but had not yet decided whether to make a formal complaint.
“I put what happened away, so it wouldn’t be a narrative to my life story,” Higgins said, according to notes taken by one of the officers. “I am quite good at doing this.”
Higgins told the police she had been to a medical centre in the Canberra suburb of Phillip, and was waiting on test results. The court has previously heard that she did not go to any doctor following the alleged rape.
Police also gave evidence that they had met initial resistance to their requests for the CCTV vision from Parliament House of the night in question.
“It was communicated down through the chain of command and through [the Department of Parliamentary Services] through our chain of command,” one of the agents said. “But we understood that we weren’t going to get a copy because it wasn’t at the time proceeding to a criminal investigation.”
Police were later able to view the footage.
The court also heard no DNA evidence was found on Higgins’ white dress, when it was eventually tested in 2021.
It had been washed before being tested, the court heard, making it more difficult, but not impossible, to obtain a DNA profile.
The trial continues before the ACT supreme court chief justice, Lucy McCallum.
