Key events3h agoProject interview unleashed a ‘virus of madness’, lawyer says3h agoWelcome to what is due to be the final day of the Lehrmann defamation trialFilters BETAKey events (2)Brittany Higgins (8)Steve Whybrow SC (7)Bruce Lehrmann (7)Michael Lee (6)28m ago20.13 EST
Justice Lee: Higgins’ behaviour could be consistent with someone ‘coming to terms with something traumatic’
Steve Whybrow SC has returned after the break and is taking Justice Michael Lee through the morning that Brittany Higgins woke up naked in the ministerial suite.
“It must have been a horrible moment for Ms Higgins to wake up in that office, it would appear, naked,” Whybrow told the court.
“Having gone in there, potentially, because there was some amorous intention on the cards, potentially because she was feeling sick.”
Bruce Lehrmann’s barrister Steven Whybrow arriving at court: he says Higgins potentially went to the ministerial suite because of ‘some amorous intention’. Photograph: Mick Tsikas/AAP
Justice Lee asked why she was naked if no sex took place.
Whybow suggested that Higgins could have taken off her dress “in anticipation that [sex] may be about to occur” or because it was her favourite dress.
He says Higgins that morning spoke to a friend who was also a security guard at Parliament House and Ben Dillaway and did not mention she had been sexually assaulted.
“In my submission, she has put herself in a situation which is highly embarrassing and humiliating and with career-limiting potential,” he said on Friday.
“She says nothing to Dillaway and when he asks for more information, she shuts him down equivocally.”
Justice Lee interrupts and says Higgins’ behaviour could also be consistent with “a narrative of someone coming to terms with something traumatic”.
Updated at 20.32 EST1h ago19.46 EST
Lehrmann barrister: Higgins had ‘no qualms’ about ‘telling complete falsehoods’
Steve Whybrow SC is arguing that Brittany Higgins’ evidence is not reliable, that she has changed her story when it suits her and has lied to police, employers and friends.
“We say, fundamentally, Ms Higgins is not a person whose evidence can be relied on at all. She’s not a reliable historian,” he told the court.
“But more significantly, she has demonstrated herself to be repeatedly and in various forums over a significant period of time less than frank or honest in giving evidence.
“Whenever she has faced a situation where she has some legal or moral or ethical obligation to tell the truth, she has demonstrated that she has no qualms whatsoever in obfuscating: asserting matters she does not know one way or the other is fact whether they are true or not, but mostly telling complete falsehoods.”
Justice Michael Lee interjected to say it seemed to him that Higgins’ comments when stating that something happened to her – to both Ben Dillaway and Chris Payne – appeared to be genuine.
Lee said Higgins told Payne in the days after the alleged…
2023-12-21 20:27:06
Post from www.theguardian.com
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