After the interview aired, Lehrmann was charged with sexual intercourse without consent, but the trial was abandoned in 2022 due to juror misconduct and not revived due to fears about Higgins’ mental health.
Without a trial and a means to clear his name, Lehrmann turned to defamation action, claiming that Network Ten and “The Project” presenter Lisa Wilkinson damaged his reputation by providing enough information in the program for him to be identified, though he was not named.
Network Ten and Wilkinson chose to fight the charge, mounting a truth defense, meaning that to win, the network’s lawyers needed to prove that on the balance of probabilities the rape happened.
Lee found Monday that the two had sex that night, but Higgins was so inebriated she couldn’t possibly have given her consent – and that Lehrmann didn’t seek to obtain it.
“I’m satisfied that it is more likely than not that Mr Lehrmann’s state of mind was such that he was so intent upon gratification to be indifferent to Miss Higgins’ consent,” said Lee.
The ruling delivers a devastating blow to Lehrmann’s attempt to clear his name. As Lee put it in his judgement: “Having escaped the lion’s den, Mr Lehrmann made the mistake of going back for his hat.”
AccusedrapistIs he now going to sue the judge for defamation?
Oh, please! Streisand the fuck out of it. Plenty of people have done what he did without ever being forced to acknowledge it was rape. Keep this story going for the sake of everyone, everywhere.
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No, this is about an Australian politician who got a party staff member either drunk or drugged and raped her in Parliament House.
The media reported it on but didn’t name names, he got offended because everyone knew it was about him. He tried to sue after the original case failed due to other reasons, bringing the whole thing back into court and he was found guilty today.
not a politician, a public service employee; a politician’s staffer.
a politician is an elected member of parliament or a senator.
He was a member of the Liberal party, he worked purely for the party, that’s a politician, he just had a shitty lesser role.
A public service employee would be the people coming up with reports for a department or the IT staff running the systems.
There needs to be tightening up of the trial by media.
If someone is guilty there is a legal system to deal with it. The media is not that system.
The legal system didn’t deal with it, as per fucking usual. He decided that he would use that fact to prove he was innocent, giving the court an opportunity to explain very carefully why he is quite clearly guilty.
This was a huge political scandal. It’s not reasonable to declare that the media should not have reported it.
Wut. This is journalism doing its job. Police are pretty bad at their jobs, prosecutors included. They often can’t be bothered to seek charges. So when someone else did after some quality journalism, that proved there was enough evidence to indict. Just because they botched the criminal case does not mean he didn’t do it.
I didn’t claim he didn’t do it.
I’m just saying trial by media is no good thing.
This is an easy statement to make but context matters. In this case, he was not named by the media but had they not covered the story, he would never have been charged because it suited the political establishment to do nothing at all.
Higgins alleged she was raped by a colleague in an exclusive 2021 television interview with the Network Ten’s “The Project” program, which also raised questions about the official response by ministers and political staffers in the aftermath of the alleged assault.
After the interview aired, Lehrmann was charged with sexual intercourse without consent, but the trial was abandoned in 2022 due to juror misconduct and not revived due to fears about Higgins’ mental health.
It was poor form for a media group to air an interview of someone in a current and high profile court case. The affect of the media attention prevented a fair trial and was completely unprofessional from Wilkinson.
What high profile court case?
There needs to be increased accountability for rapists.
If someone is guilty there is a legal system to deal with it. It should consistently do that.
