Linda Reynolds’ defamation case against her former staffer Brittany Higgins in the WA Supreme Court will continue from 10.30am local time (12.30pm AEST).
The case hinges on social media posts Ms Higgins and her husband, David Sharaz, wrote in 2022 and 2023 that the Liberal senator claims damaged her reputation.
In April, a Federal Court judge found that Ms Higgins was likely raped by her former colleague Bruce Lehrmann in Parliament House in March 2019. The rape took place on a couch inside Ms Reynolds’ office.
Ms Higgins has long-maintained Ms Reynolds and her former chief-of-staff Fiona Brown did not support her in the wake of her assault. Ms Reynolds and Ms Brown have maintained they did.
The social media posts were critical of the way Ms Reynolds handled the rape claims.
The trial began on Friday and is set down for four weeks.
Ms Reynolds started her evidence-in-chief on Monday, which will continue through until about 11.30am local time.
After that, Ms Higgins’ barrister Rachael Young SC will begin cross-examination.
On Tuesday, Ms Reynolds told the court she felt threatened by Ms Higgins’ now-husband David Sharaz when he wrote allegedly defamatory posts about her online.
Mr Sharaz uploaded a number of posts about Ms Reynolds between 2022 and 2023, which the senator said ‘creeped me out’ because she felt as though she was being stalked.
Specifically, she referred to a 2022 post where Mr Sharaz had posted a screenshot of a press release on the senator’s website titled ‘Empowering Women’.
In the post, he wrote: ‘I see you Linda.’
In court on Tuesday, Ms Reynolds said ‘it was creepy, it was threatening.’
‘When someone says that – I see you, Linda – apart from the stalky nature of the comment on these posts, saying something like that is awful and I was upset and a bit creeped out.’
‘It’s a subtle reminder – I’m watching you, and it was based on the lies they’d been propagating for some time.’
Ms Reynolds also spoke through tears as she described the days and weeks after she was accused of covering up Ms Higgins’ rape.
The Liberal senator continually denied trying to cover Ms Higgins’ rape up.
When Ms Higgins first went public with the rape claims in 2021, Ms Reynolds was grilled over it during Question Time – but decided the rape matter was criminal and should not be prosecuted in Parliament House.
‘There are no words to describe what it was like being accused of covering up the rape of a young woman in my office in a way that I knew was not true,’ she told the court.
‘I found it almost impossible to process mentally and all of a sudden, in a few days, days I had gone from a senator and minister doing her job, and doing I well, to being nationally vilified as someone who would do something so despicable.’
She said her peers looked at her differently, some distanced themselves from her because they wondered if she had actually tried to cover up the rape.
‘I said time and time again, this is not a matter to be prosecuted in Parliament – it was a criminal matter and it was Brittany’s agency to tell the story,’ she told the court.
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