Women are furious about the Lehrmann trial outcome. Men should be too

No reasonable human being would want their daughters or their sons to go through what Brittany Higgins and Bruce Lehrmann have gone through. Not in a million years. Diabolical for both of them.

These are the facts. The retrial of former Liberal staffer Bruce Lehrmann over the alleged rape of Brittany Higgins, also a former Liberal staffer, has been aborted and charges dropped. There are serious concerns about the mental health of Higgins, said the Director of Public Prosecutions for the ACT Shane Drumgold SC on Friday. There is, so far, no word about how Lehrmann is faring but the last year would not have been easy on him either.

I don’t know what happened between Lehrmann and Higgins and neither do you.Credit:Alex Ellinghausen/Rhett Wyman

This has been the court case of the century in this country. All the fears we have for our daughters and for our sons are written here and in other publications. I absolutely know I would have written this story had Higgins come to me, but now I wonder about the sense of making this a public narrative when we knew we would have to rely on the juries to do the right thing. Hard to do the right thing under so much pressure. Would I have counselled Higgins differently? Doubt it.

This is such a shocking and terrible story, of a woman who says she was sexually assaulted and of a man who denied those claims. And exactly the same story is played out in courts across the land and 10 times over before it even gets to court. So often it doesn’t. Not enough of what is called proof. No footage. No medical samples. Nothing. Just her word against his. I am not on the bandwagon of “believe all women”, nor am I on the bandwagon of “all men are bastards”. But this case drove people into camps where justice was not served, where humanity was not served. And here we are. No justice for either of the two concerned. Is he a liar or is she? We all know those questions will follow them around forever.

This case, which has made national headlines for years now, only proves one thing. Women are furious about this outcome but men should be furious too. We urgently want a society where we have respect and hope. Respect for each other and hope that we can live in a country where violence of all kinds is erased. We are not there yet. Not by a long shot.

Speaking generally, obviously, we know that rates of sexual assault are increasing. Earlier this year we discovered 51 per cent of women in their 20s have reported being subjected to sexual violence.

Terrifyingly, lawyer Angela Lynch, one of the country’s foremost campaigners against sexual violence, tells me that she’s spoken to sexual violence services across the nation and not only are they unable to deal with demand, they are seeing more violent assaults. Strangulation. Anal rape. Bodies and minds bandaged and broken.

I don’t know what happened between Lehrmann and Higgins and neither do you. Only two people know, the two people concerned. But we know this – Australians need to understand much more about consent than we do. Sadly, we also need to do a better job of communicating the absolute need for victim-survivors to go to the police and to hospitals.

It is beyond frustrating that the legal process has not been followed through, but even more frustrating to me that those who have been victims are made victims twice over by the legal system. Since the trial was discharged, I’ve spoken to so many lawyers with expertise in the area. Surely, I’ve asked, surely convictions would be more likely without juries? But it turns out that during COVID, based on ACT data, victims were no more likely to see offenders convicted in judge-alone trials.

And what of perpetrators or those who might be? For years, I’ve interviewed Michael Flood, now a professor at QUT, one of Australia’s leaders of research on masculinity and gender relations, about our longest war. He says what we all know in our hearts. We must encourage men to adopt a fundamental respect for women’s bodily rights and autonomy and to see consent as important, to understand entitlement doesn’t help anyone, not men as they seek to have long-lasting, loving relationships with women. Men, he says, have a problem.

Not all men. But too many men. Far too many. And too many women whose stories are never told. Far too many sexual assaults. Far too much grief and pain and loss. And let me quote the extraordinary Saxon Mullins, she who survived multiple court cases and who was told she could not get her third day in court.

“The system DESTROYS you. Because that’s what it was built to do. We ask people to come forward and to share their stories to make it better and then we punish them for it. Is it changing? Of course it’s changing but at a pace so glacial we continue to hurt survivors.”

Hurt survivors and everyone else involved. It can’t go on like this. As Angela Lynch says, we need the federal attorney-general to lead a national conversation about how we achieve justice for sexual violence complainants in Australia. All ideas should be on to be on the table. National leadership is required, and a sense of urgency and engagement with survivors, and key stakeholders to consider all ideas and a way forward.

“You can’t just say sexual violence is a national priority you have to back this with resourcing to make this a reality. ”

If you or anyone you know needs support, you can contact the National Sexual Assault, Domestic and Family Violence Counselling Service on 1800RESPECT (1800 737 732), Lifeline 131 114, or Beyond Blue 1300 224 636.

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