Liberal Senator Linda Reynolds has linked Kimberley Kitching’s death to the saga over Brittany Higgins’ rape allegation during a defamation trial.

Senator Reynolds is suing Brittany Higgins over a series of social media posts containing alleged mistruths concerning her conduct that she believes have damaged her reputation.

She told the Western Australian Supreme Court that the late Senator Kitching warned her in parliament in early 2021 that the Labor Party “knew about the incident in my office two years prior to that and that they were going to rain hell on me and the government”.

“I said to her, ‘why would anybody weaponise such an incident’,” she on Tuesday.

Senator Reynolds said Senator Kitching had passed a letter containing allegations about the mishandling of the Higgins incident in 2019 to the Australian Federal Police and Senator Penny Wong was “incredibly angry” with her because “Labor could have weaponised it”.

She said Senator Kitching was left  “angry and upset” after Senator Wong confronted her, before Ms Higgins’ lawyer Rachael Young objected to comments about the senator’s feelings.

Senator Reynolds said she was “incredulous” Labor would make such a plan and that she elevated the issue to the prime minister’s office before telling the court her blood pressure was rising.

Justice Paul Tottle suggested adjourning the court, to which Senator Reynolds replied: “Thank you, this is a particularly emotional point, given that it led to Senator Kitching’s death”.

Senator Kitching died from a suspected heart attack on March 10, 2022.

Senator Reynolds said she didn’t hear anything about Ms Higgins’ alleged mistreatment again until Samantha Maiden from News Corp published an article and Network Ten’s The Project ran a story.

“I was incredibly angry, I was incredibly hurt and (Ms Higgins) could not have picked a worse issue to bring me down,” she said as her lawyer Martin Bennett read through Maiden’s article.

“It is such an abhorrent, horrid thing to say to any woman that you’ve mistreated their rape allegation and not only that you’ve covered it up.

“I was angry at Brittany but I was also angry at myself and just wondering how we had got it so wrong.” 

Senator Reynolds said she was left confused about what cues she had missed.

“I genuinely felt sorry for her … How could two years later our recollections be so different of what we did and what happened at that time?” she said.

“It’s not like we just got a little wrong. What she was saying is we got it completely wrong because her recollections were completely different from mine.”

The senator said she didn’t doubt Ms Higgins’ memory of the alleged rape “but everything else she said I knew weren’t true”.

Senator Reynolds said she felt sick watching The Project episode and out of frustration and anger described Ms Higgins as a “lying cow”.

“Certainly it characterised how I was feeling,” she said recalling for the court how she was later forced to apologise for the comment.

Senator Reynolds also said that after the story broke in the media she decided not to prosecute the matter under parliamentary privilege.

“This was a criminal allegation that the police had an open case on and it was not the moral or the right thing for me to do.” 

She said it became a “complete media frenzy” in the days that followed.

There were hundreds of articles on the line, media stories,” she said.

“My office was bombarded.”

Ms Higgins alleged that colleague Bruce Lehrmann raped her in Senator Reynolds’ office. He always denied the allegation and his criminal trial was derailed by juror misconduct.

Ms Higgins is due to leave her home in France to give evidence in the defamation trial later in August.

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