She said no, but he did not stop, she said. Once finished, “he looked at me, and then he left,” she added in the video recording. “I was crying for about the entire process,” she said.
Although she met with the police to describe what had happened, she did not proceed with a formal complaint because of fears for her job, the prosecution said. Mr. Drumgold read aloud a text message that Ms. Higgins sent to a friend that said, “If I want to maintain my job, I can’t talk about it.”
Ms. Higgins, in the police interview, detailed a “don’t ask, don’t tell policy” in Parliament House. “Already, it was so ingrained in me, this culture of silence,” she said.
Ms. Reynolds has maintained that her office did not pressure Ms. Higgins to drop her case, but she apologized for the fact that Ms. Higgins had “felt unsupported.” Mr. Morrison also apologized to Ms. Higgins for the “terrible experiences” she had endured.
Last year, Ms. Higgins decided to reopen her case with the police and resigned from her job. Simultaneously, she went public with her allegations.
Mr. Lehrmann, 27, was charged in August 2021 with one count of sexual intercourse without consent. The maximum penalty for the charge is 12 years in prison.
On Tuesday, his defense urged the jury to consider Ms. Higgins’ credibility and reliability. In police interviews, she described events in general terms because, “in reality, as she told the police, she doesn’t really remember what happened,” Mr. Whybrow said.