Former senator Linda Reynolds says she will continue to fight legal battles until \u201cthe bitter end\u201d in the Brittany Higgins saga, despite it having already cost her millions of dollars and \u201cbroken\u201d her.<\/p>\n
In an expansive interview on the ABC on Tuesday night, Reynolds said allegations that she had covered up the rape had been subsequently disproven in multiple court judgments. She said she had never disputed that Higgins had been raped.<\/p>\n
Bruce Lehrmann was charged with raping Higgins and pleaded not guilty, but a criminal trial on those allegations was abandoned after juror misconduct. He was not trialled again because of concerns about Higgins\u2019 welfare.<\/p>\n
The federal court has found on the civil burden of proof \u2013 the balance of probability \u2013 that Lehrmann raped Higgins. A recent appeal against that decision, in a defamation action brought by Bruce Lehrmann against Network Ten and journalist Lisa Wilkinson, was dismissed, and Lehrmann\u2019s lawyer has flagged a possible high court appeal.<\/p>\n
Sign up: AU Breaking News email<\/a><\/p>\n Reynolds successfully sued Higgins over a series of social media posts the former defence minister believed damaged her reputation. In August the Western Australia supreme court awarded her damages of $315,000 plus $26,109 interest after finding some of the posts were defamatory. Higgins was also ordered to pay most of her legal costs in the case, estimated at over $1m.<\/p>\n In October Reynolds launched bankruptcy proceedings against Higgins in an effort to recover the money.<\/p>\n Asked whether she had any qualms about continuing to pursue a rape victim in part of her quest for justice, Reynolds told the ABC on Tuesday she had \u201cnever, ever disputed the rape allegation\u201d but said \u201cthe history of this is incredibly important\u201d.<\/p>\n \u201cBecause seven years ago, there was one allegation of rape after two staff had entered my office unauthorised after hours,\u201d she said. \u201cThere was an allegation of rape. It was very clear to me and my chief of staff then that was a criminal matter that needed to be dealt with by the AFP. And they did.<\/p>\n \u201cIt was also very clear to me that that allegation required proper welfare support to Ms Higgins at the time. We sought the advice, all of the correct advice. We followed it \u2026.we did everything right. But it\u2019s taken five years, almost, to get the truth told by the judges. And to make the truth binding.\u201d<\/p>\n Reynolds is also suing the commonwealth over Higgins\u2019 $2.4m settlement.<\/p>\n Reynolds told the ABC that case could not be settled with an apology.<\/p>\n \u201cJustice is not cheap. Because I was forced to take action to defend my reputation \u2026 we can\u2019t undo all of the damage that\u2019s been done over five years. But it has been hellishly expensive for me to seek justice through the civil courts.<\/p>\n \u201cI have no regrets in doing it, because it has flushed out a lot of the truth. And certainly the truth about the allegations that were fabricated. But it has cost me a great deal.<\/p>\n \u201cWe have two mortgages on our house. We\u2019ve got millions of dollars of debt. I don\u2019t regret it. If I lose everything, it will have been worth it.\u201d<\/p>\n Reynolds also railed against Labor, Liberal colleagues, and the media for their part in the scandal.<\/p>\n She appeared to blame colleagues who wanted her job of defence minister for contributing to the story, said Labor refused to accept court findings about how the matter was handled, and she accused Lisa Wilkinson of exploiting a rape victim by putting them on national television as part of what Reynolds alleged was a \u201cclearly curated, fabricated, political scandal\u201d involving other reporters.<\/p>\n Asked why she was continuing three separate court cases in relation to the matter, Reynolds said: \u201cIt\u2019s quite clear to me that I either had to fall over and just let these lies carry me away, or I stood up and fought for the truth and for justice for me and for everybody else who\u2019s been so damaged by these lies and by the weaponisation of these lies.<\/p>\n skip past newsletter promotion<\/a><\/p>\n Sign up to Breaking News Australia<\/p>\n Get the most important news as it breaks<\/p>\n Privacy Notice: Newsletters may contain information about charities, online ads, and content funded by outside parties. If you do not have an account, we will create a guest account for you on theguardian.com<\/a> to send you this newsletter. You can complete full registration at any time. For more information about how we use your data see our Privacy Policy<\/a>. We use Google reCaptcha to protect our website and the Google Privacy Policy<\/a> and Terms of Service<\/a> apply.<\/p>\n after newsletter promotion<\/p>\n \u201cI didn\u2019t expect it would take five years and it would still be going. But for me, five years ago almost to the day, my life was completely destroyed. My reputation, my career and my health.<\/p>\n \u201cNo one can undo that. But I\u2019m still fighting for the truth and for justice for myself and for others.\u201d<\/p>\n Of Lehrmann, Reynolds said: \u201cWell, I absolutely unreservedly condemn Bruce Lehrmann, because I clearly had identified before that rape that he was unsuited to working in my office and any ministerial office.<\/p>\n \u201cSo, please don\u2019t misunderstand that. I think that is very clear.<\/p>\n \u201cAnd his own behaviour, as I said, has demonstrated his character.\u201d<\/p>\n When asked about Higgins and whether she had sympathy for her as a rape victim, Reynolds responded that she and her former chief of staff Fiona Brown had been found to have done \u201ceverything right\u201d by Higgins in two separate judgments.<\/p>\n \u201cSo of course I had great sympathy \u2026[but] that first day these allegations [that there had been a cover-up] came out \u2013 I was absolutely mortified about what [Higgins] had said, because it did not accord with my recollection.<\/p>\n \u201cSo my initial reactions were \u2013 how could I have missed this? How could Fiona have missed this? But I knew her allegations were not true, but she appeared to believe them. And I felt bad.\u201d<\/p>\n This story was amended on 10 December 2025 to remove reference to a claim by Reynolds in her court action against the commonwealth that Dreyfus had committed \u201cmisfeasance of public office\u201d. Reynolds dropped that allegation in her re-amended statement of claim submitted in November.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Former senator Linda Reynolds says she will continue to fight legal battles until \u201cthe bitter end\u201d in the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":211511,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[43,44,41,39,42,40],"class_list":{"0":"post-339070","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-headlines","9":"tag-news","10":"tag-top-news","11":"tag-top-stories","12":"tag-topnews","13":"tag-topstories"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/339070","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=339070"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/339070\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/211511"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=339070"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=339070"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=339070"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}