was his last legal avenue to challenge the outcome.<\/a><\/p>\nRejection follows failed appeal in Federal Court<\/p>\n
Mr Lehrmann had sued Network Ten and journalist Lisa Wilkinson over a 2021 interview on The Project featuring Ms Higgins, in which she said she was raped in the office of then-senator Linda Reynolds, but did not name the man she was accusing.<\/p>\n
Sexual assault\u00a0support lines:<\/p>\n
However, Mr Lehrmann argued he was identifiable.<\/p>\n
A criminal trial was later held, but collapsed due to juror misconduct, with no findings against Mr Lehrmann.<\/p>\n
He has always maintained his innocence.<\/p>\n
He later launched defamation action in the Federal Court, but Justice Michael Lee ultimately found that the pair had had sex in the office of Ms Reynolds, that Ms Higgins did not consent, and that Mr Lehrmann was indifferent to whether she had consented.<\/p>\n
“Mr Lehrmann raped Ms Higgins,” Justice Lee said.<\/p>\n
“I hasten to stress this is a finding on the balance of probabilities.”![\"Close](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/6bd635f3a192e3e101d262d355f27485.jpeg\")
<\/p>\n
Brittany Higgins said it felt like she could “breathe again” after Mr Lehrmann’s Federal Court appeal failed. (AAP: Dean Lewins)<\/p>\n
Mr Lehrmann attempted to overturn that original judgment on four grounds, including that he was denied procedural fairness.<\/p>\n
The full court of the Federal Court dismissed the appeal in December, ruling Justice Lee had not erred in any of the ways alleged by Mr Lehrmann.<\/p>\n
Mr Lehrmann was ordered to pay the costs incurred by Network Ten and Ms Wilkinson for running the appeal.<\/p>\n
Appeal judges went further than Justice Lee<\/p>\n
In his ruling, Justice Lee noted that Mr Lehrmann had already faced a criminal trial for the alleged rape, but that it had been abandoned.<\/p>\n
The Director of Public Prosecutions then decided not to hold a retrial, out of concerns for Ms Higgins’s mental health.<\/p>\n
“Having escaped the lion’s den, Mr Lehrmann made the mistake of coming back for his hat,” Justice Lee said.<\/p>\n
In his judgment, Justice Lee said he was satisfied that it was “more likely than not” that Mr Lehrmann was “so intent upon gratification to be indifferent to Ms Higgins’s consent and hence went ahead with sexual intercourse without caring whether she consented”.<\/p>\n
![\"Bruce](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/a3fc9c1cb5e0bf12bae8a728bedf1045.jpeg\")
<\/p>\n
Justice Michael Lee said that Mr Lehrmann was “so intent upon gratification to be indifferent to Ms Higgins’s consent”.<\/p>\n
In their ruling more than a year later, the appeal judges went even further than Justice Lee over the question of whether Mr Lehrmann had knowledge of Ms Higgins’s lack of consent.<\/p>\n
During the 2024 defamation trial, Justice Lee found Mr Lehrmann’s conduct amounted to “non-advertent recklessness”.<\/p>\n
But the appeal judges accepted a contention from Network Ten and Ms Wilkinson that the primary judge ought to have found Mr Lehrmann had “actual knowledge” that Ms Higgins did not consent to sex.<\/p>\n
At the outset of the appeal, Mr Lehrmann’s lawyer Zali Burrows had told the court her client could not afford a barrister, and that she would do her best to represent him.<\/p>\n
![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/813a22763739c22ca967289d4957b68a.jpeg\")
<\/p>\n
Bruce Lehrmann’s lawyer Zali Burrows outside the Federal Court in Sydney.\u00a0 (AAP: Mick Tsikas)<\/p>\n
During the appeal, Ms Burrows told the court that Justice Lee had made up his own case and gone “on his own fact-finding mission”, basing his findings on facts that were not part of the case, and denying Mr Lehrmann procedural fairness.<\/p>\n
She told the court Mr Lehrmann would have run a different case if he had known how the ruling would unfold.<\/p>\n
In the second ground, Ms Burrows said the judge had made an error in his assessment about how an “ordinary reasonable person” would have perceived the interview.<\/p>\n
But the appeal judges questioned these grounds, with Justice Craig Colvin urging Ms Burrows to spell out how Justice Lee had found a “different” case.<\/p>\n
“The findings His Honour has made are all within the four corners of what was described,” Justice Colvin said.’I can breathe again’<\/p>\n
After the appeal was rejected, Brittany Higgins said in a statement: “Finally, it feels like I can breathe again”.<\/p>\n
“While on the face of it this was a defamation case against a media outlet, in reality it was once again a rape trial.”<\/p>\n
She thanked the court and the defence legal team “for being such ardent supporters of survivors of sexual assault”.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“I cannot begin to tell you how re-traumatising it is to have your rapist weaponise the legal system against you for daring to speak out,” she said.![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/d0612c2f46f7b6278168fe28ad442df5.jpeg\")
<\/p>\n
Journalist Lisa Wilkinson\u00a0was sued for defamation alongside Network Ten. (AAP: Bianca De Marchi)<\/p>\n
Lisa Wilkinson’s lawyer Sue Chrysanthou said at the time that her client was “utterly delighted” by the outcome.<\/p>\n
“She’s so grateful to the court for its diligence and efficiency in delivering this judgment in an extremely complicated matter.”<\/p>\n
Today, Network Ten declined to comment.<\/p>\n
In the wake of the Federal Court appeal findings in December, the network hailed the result.<\/p>\n
“It remains a vindication for the courageous Brittany Higgins who gave a voice to women across the nation,” a spokesperson said at the time.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The High Court has dismissed former Liberal staffer Bruce Lehrmann’s bid to challenge the outcome of his failed…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":164926,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[32484,2666,1110,61971,13394,2667,18231,43,81932,2668,44,43016,13396,279861,41,39,42,40,1109],"class_list":{"0":"post-594982","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-accused","9":"tag-act","10":"tag-appeal","11":"tag-brittany-higgins","12":"tag-bruce-lehrmann","13":"tag-canberra","14":"tag-defamation","15":"tag-headlines","16":"tag-high-court-of-australia","17":"tag-local-stories","18":"tag-news","19":"tag-parliament-house","20":"tag-rape","21":"tag-rejected","22":"tag-top-news","23":"tag-top-stories","24":"tag-topnews","25":"tag-topstories","26":"tag-trial"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/594982","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=594982"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/594982\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/164926"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=594982"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=594982"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=594982"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}