The first week of the ACT Supreme Court trial being followed by the nation has concluded after days of questioning the woman at its centre.

Brittany Higgins initially sat in the courtroom as CCTV footage from the night she alleges she was raped was played for the jury.

It begins with what looks like a regular Friday night out at a popular Canberra bar: Ms Higgins arrives in a white cocktail dress, says hello to a table of her colleagues, gets herself a drink.

Most people at the table thought they were about to become unemployed, Miss Higgins afterwards told the court. The 2019 election was looming and the Liberal Party, for whom some worked as ministerial staffers, was expected to lose government.

She had been in Canberra a matter of months, moving from the Gold Coast to take up her self-described dream job working for a federal minister. 

The man she accuses of raping her, Bruce Lehrmann, also sat in court. He has pleaded not guilty to sexual assault without consent.

The pair were staffers in the office of then defence industry minister Linda Reynolds.

In his opening address to the jury, Lehrmann’s defence lawyer Steven Whybrow said the Mark Twain quote “never let the truth get in the way of a good story” rang true in this case.

He said while violence against women was an “under-reported and under-prosecuted scourge on our society”, the story Ms Higgins had told of that night was not true.

Over four-and-a-half hours on Friday, March 22 2019, condensed into about an hour’s worth of footage, Ms Higgins is seen having 11 drinks.

Crown prosecutor Shane Drumgold asked her to confirm the number as the clip continued. He noted each time, who paid for them.

Mr Lehrmann is seen buying Ms Higgins’ drinks on some occasions. 

In an interview with police two years after the alleged assault, Ms Higgins describes herself “as drunk as she’d ever been in her life”.

Later, the pair are seen leaving the bar. Ms Higgins said she went to a nightclub with Lehrmann and two colleagues and recalled the group taking shots. 

The jury also saw footage of Ms Higgins and Lehrmann arriving at Parliament House in the early hours of Saturday. 

Ms Higgins walked through the security gate, was required to take off her shoes and struggled to put them back on.

Barefoot and carrying her heels, she and Lehrmann were escorted to Senator Reynold’s office by a security guard. The film sequence ended after the pair entered. 

The jury saw still pictures of Senator Reynolds’ office, where the assault allegedly occurred, taken by police two years later.

When a close-up of the couch was shown, Ms Higgins described how she was “jammed up in the corner” when she woke up to Lehrmann having sex with her.

“I felt like a prop,” she said.

Recounting the alleged rape, Ms Higgins said she felt “trapped” and “not human” as Lehrmann hovered over her.

“It didn’t feel like it was about me at all,” she said.

She said she was crying and asking him to stop “on repeat”.

The footage also showed Lehrmann leaving parliament alone about an hour after arriving. 

Ms Higgins is seen leaving the building at 10am on Saturday, wearing a jacket she borrowed from a bag of clothes in the minister’s office.

She said when she returned to work on Monday following the alleged assault, Lehrmann did not seem ashamed or upset about what had happened.

She was scared she wouldn’t be believed because of his more senior role in the office. 

But she was also afraid of the story leaking and the potential damage to the Liberal Party ahead of the election. 

She told police she would have conversations in person or on WhatsApp. 

“In hindsight, I made it a lot harder for myself to verify. It was so stupid,” she told police as she started to cry.

“It’s not stupid, Brittany,” Detective Leading Senior Constable Trent Madders told her.

The court heard while Ms Higgins initially felt supported by her chief of staff, Fiona Brown, after she revealed her allegations, the tone quickly shifted.

In a meeting with Ms Brown and Senator Reynolds, Ms Higgins said the latter apologised for what had happened but the conversation turned to the upcoming election.

After dreaming of becoming a political media adviser, she said she feared she would lose her job if she made a complaint to the police. 

Mr Whybrow attempted to discredit Ms Higgins’ actions following the alleged assault. 

He suggested she told Ms Brown and her ex-partner Ben Dillaway about false doctor’s appointments to “bolster” her allegations. 

He put to Ms Higgins that she did not go to the doctor because she had not had sex with anyone.

“Nothing you are saying right now is true … and it’s deeply insulting,” she said.

Ms Higgins admitted under cross-examination she had underestimated the level of media attention she would receive after going public with her allegations in 2021. 

“I never necessarily thought that … the police would ever prosecute this argument, I never thought I’d get here, I never thought his (Lehrmann’s) name would ever be published,” she said.

“I just wanted to speak to a cultural problem that I had gone through.”

Chief Justice Lucy McCallum urged the jury not to read any media reports about the case. 

“You must rest exclusively on the evidence you hear in this courtroom,” she reminded them. 

The trial continues on Monday, when Ms Higgins will continue being cross-examined.

By Maeve Bannister in Canberra

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