It’s been 1,295 days since Brittany Higgins faced the cameras and told millions of Australians that she was raped inside an office in Parliament House.
For many of those days, her name hasn’t left the headlines.
The three years since she made her allegations public have been nothing short of traumatic for Higgins. She’s gone through media attacks, an abandoned criminal trial, civil proceedings, and now a defamation trial, launched by Senator Linda Reynolds.
Without discounting Higgins’ trauma, the three years have been tough for all parties involved – including Reynolds.
But how worthwhile has this latest defamation trial been for Reynolds in healing that trauma? How costly has it been?
Win or lose, the cost is astronomical.
Women who are sexual assault victim-survivors experience mental health challenges at a much higher rate than women who have not experienced assault. According to a 2021-2022 study from the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare (AIHW), two thirds (67 per cent) of women who were assaulted by a male perpetrator in the past 10 years said they experienced anxiety and feared for their safety in the 12 months after their most recent incident of violence.
That anxiety, among other mental health issues, can all be resurfaced when a victim-survivor is retraumatised. And there’s no doubt Higgins has been re-traumatised for 1,295 days.
The defamation trial digs up trauma that should have been buried when Higgins won a small slither of justice in April this year. Back then, the Federal Court of Australia found that on the balance of probabilities, Bruce Lehrmann raped Brittany Higgins in Parliament House in 2019. The findings, according to consent advocates, were trauma-informed and aligned with the “changing cultural standards” toward affirmative consent.
Had the story finished there, Higgins, who is pregnant, and her partner, David Sharaz, could have been preparing for their new addition to the family in their home in France. Reynolds could have been preparing for her next chapter in life too – her retirement from politics after a ten-year career as a WA Senator.
Instead, Higgins is reliving each devastating moment from the last three years. Again.
Both Higgins and Reynolds have said they have had to sell their houses to afford this trial. Higgins and Sharaz had just moved to France to start a new life together, as a family. Now forced to sell their house, that future remains uncertain.
Reynolds, who is launching the proceedings herself, is also selling her home to pay for “justice”. She’s due to retire from politics at the next election. She’s putting her retirement plans, including her home, on the line.
Today is the final day of the trial. Justice Paul Tottle will hear the closing statements from both at the WA Supreme Court to wrap up proceedings.
While Higgins was never called as a witness to the proceedings, the ordeal undoubtedly has had knock-on re-traumatising impacts on her.
In fact, last week, Reynolds’ lawyer Martin Bennett requested to call Higgins’ doctor in Queensland, Julio Clavijo, as a witness. The intention was to question the psychiatrist who drafted the psychiatric report that ultimately won Higgins her $2.4 million payout from the Commonwealth in 2022. Justice Tottle denied this request.
One can only imagine how devastating it would be to have your mental health questioned like that in front of a court, had the request been approved.
Now, ahead of the closing statements, we wait. It could take several weeks, even months, before Justice Tottle delivers his findings.