Bruce Lehrmann in dock on new rape charges
Bruce Lehrmann has been charged with rape after a young woman he met in a Toowoomba strip club Googled the Brittany Higgins rape case and then alleged she recognised him as the man who had unprotected sex with her without consent.
The alleged victim told police she realised it was the same man who introduced himself as “Bryce” when they met at the club in October 2021, only a few weeks after he first appeared in court over allegations he raped Ms Higgins in Parliament House.
Mr Lehrmann allegedly had consensual sex with the woman that night but failed to wear a condom when they had sex twice the next morning. Failing to wear a condom without a partner’s permission is considered sexual assault under Queensland law.
The 28-year-old was named on Thursday as the well-known Australian facing rape charges in Toowoomba after the Supreme Court of Queensland lifted a suppression order that had protected his identity.
The prosecution and media outlets, including The Australian, had fought in court to remove the non-publication order, arguing that it went against the principles of open justice and that Mr Lehrmann had no automatic protection under the new laws.
The former Liberal staffer was not present in court for the hearing, and remains on bail.
He is expected to plead not guilty to the charges.
Prosecutors in the ACT last year dropped charges against Mr Lehrmann for the alleged rape of Ms Higgins, saying a retrial of the case would pose an unacceptable risk to her health. The trial had earlier been aborted after a juror was found to have brought outside material into the jury room.
Bruce Lehrmann named as Toowoomba man facing two rape charges
Mr Lehrmann was charged in January with two counts of rape by detectives from the Criminal Investigations Branch over the alleged offence in Toowoomba but has not yet been committed for trial.
The alleged victim said she met up with friends at the Powerhouse nightclub in Toowoomba’s CBD in October 2021, where she consumed alcohol before moving on to adult entertainment venue The Vault with two friends.
There, according to a police court brief, she “recalls socialising with friends, consuming more alcohol and a quantity of cocaine”.
At some point in the evening, she met Mr Lehrmann in the smokers’ area and talked to him before they left in a taxi to the house where he was staying with a friend.
The pair got into bed clothed. After a brief conversation, she said, she recalled that they kissed and she told him to put a condom on. She then claimed that she woke to find her legs open and Mr Lehrmann’s penis inside her.
The police brief states that she didn’t recall taking off her clothes or underwear.
Mr Lehrmann was holding up a bag of cocaine which he claimed to have found on her breast, she said.
“He emptied the cocaine on to the bedside table and cut it up into two lines with a card.”
She says she had one line and he had the other, according to the police brief.
She said the next thing she remembered was waking up the next morning with Mr Lehrmann having sex with her. She said she told him to stop. The woman claimed she felt groggy when he had sex with her a third time.
After establishing that he had ejaculated inside her, the woman said she told Mr Lehrmann she needed to get the morning-after pill. The pair then drove to a nearby pharmacy to get the morning-after pill, and she asked him to drive her home.
On the way, they stopped to pick up coffee from a McDonald’s drive-thru before Mr Lehrmann dropped her at her own home.
Over the following week, the pair engaged in conversation over social media platform SnapChat but soon lost contact.
The woman says just over six weeks later, in November 2021, she was at home speaking with her flatmate’s mother when the conversation turned to the Higgins case; she decided to search the internet on her phone and realised the man was Mr Lehrmann.
The following day she reported the matter to Toowoomba police and later provided a formal witness statement. The Australian understands police will allege they have CCTV footage from the club showing the pair socialising and leaving together, as well as confirmation of the taxi booking in Mr Lehrmann’s name and receipts for the McDonald’s coffee.
Mr Lehrmann was granted bail after being charged, with conditions including that he not contact the complainant and that he surrender his passport, which was not opposed by police.
His lawyers have sought access to thousands of pages of data and messages from the woman’s phone, for up to six months prior to the date of the incident.
On Thursday, judge Peter Applegarth lifted an interim suppression order on Mr Lehrmann’s identity.
Earlier this month, Toowoomba magistrate Clare Kelly lifted a suppression order but delayed her decision to allow Mr Lehrmann’s lawyers to apply to the Supreme Court to keep it in place.
The media had been barred from naming Mr Lehrmann in several court appearances this year because previous laws protected the identity of people charged with serious sexual offences until they were committed to trial.
At the hearing on Thursday, Mr Lehrmann’s barrister, Andrew Hoare, argued that his client had experienced suicidal ideation during the past two years and was at risk of “catastrophic” self-harm, including suicide, if the non-publication order was lifted.
Mr Hoare said Ms Kelly did not properly consider the risk to the man if he were named.
The court was read an excerpt from a report from a forensic psychologist who treated the man, which said: “My concern for the applicant has been alarmed due to the deterioration in his mental state.”
Justice Applegarth said that just because there was a high risk did not mean a non-publication order was necessary. “What can one make of the state of the defendant’s psychology at the moment, and what protective measures are available to him to reduce that identified risk?
“I dare say many people facing the criminal justice system are having suicidal ideations … the existence of suicidal ideations is not necessarily sufficient to establish the level of unacceptable risk (to justify) non-publication.”
Justice Applegarth questioned whether if a non-publication order were granted, other people’s rights – including the media and members of the public – would be affected.
“Absent this order, someone can come into the public gallery of the Toowoomba Magistrates Court and hear what goes on and report it when they go home to someone when they’re having dinner,” Justice Applegarth said.
“(And) a large media entity, small media entity, a reporter from the Toowoomba Chronicle has the right to report matters, including identifying matters (of) the defendant.”
Justice Applegarth said if an order was made, media organisations would lose that right.
“The evidence before the magistrate included evidence that the potential naming of the applicant (Mr Lehrmann) prior to the conclusion of the committal proceeding weighed heavily on him and had affected his mental health,” Justice Applegarth found.
“This unfortunate effect on his mental health permitted, but did not compel a finding that a non-publication order was necessary to protect the applicant’s safety.”
In his detailed reasons, the judge noted that Mr Lehrmann’s lawyers failed to prove that a non-publication order was necessary for his protection.
“The evidence included the presentation of the applicant in media interviews, and the fact that he made no mention in them of being in a poor psychological state for reasons he did not wish to disclose to the public,” he said.
“Instead, he presented to the public, for reasons neither he, his solicitor, nor his psychologist adequately explained to the magistrate, as someone who was keen to litigate pending defamation cases and ‘light some fires’.”
Mr Lehrmann’s submissions had been backed by an expert report from forensic psychologist James Brown, who had treated him several times.
Dr Brown said Mr Lehrmann had reported a “depressed mood and suicidal ideation” in February 2021, when Ms Higgins’s allegations against him were first published in the media.
The “triggering event” for Mr Lehrmann’s “adjustment disorder with depressed mood” was the airing of those allegations, Dr Brown said.
The psychologist saw him frequently during those first six months, and then about monthly from October 2021 until the abandonment of his criminal trial in December 2022.
Mr Lehrmann was charged with the two fresh counts of rape in January 2023, in relation to an alleged attack in Toowoomba in October 2021. “Dr Brown reported that (Mr Lehrmann) had reached out to him in 2023 on a number of occasions for crisis support in times where he was struggling to cope with his ongoing situation,” Justice Applegarth’s judgment said.
He had relocated interstate and was “said to have expressed ‘feelings of hopelessness and helplessness, combined with … insecure housing and financial strain’ that caused Dr Brown to be concerned that the applicant ‘remains a high risk to himself under the pressures he is facing, and to allow him to be identified in the current matter may result in dire consequences’.”
Lawyers for the media organisations argued that Mr Lehrmann had courted media attention in four nationally broadcast television interviews between June and August this year: two on Channel 7’s Spotlight program, one on Sky News with Sharri Markson, and one on Channel 7’s Sunrise.
In the interviews, Mr Lehrmann disclosed that he was suicidal for “a little while there in the start of 2021” and that March 2021 was one of his lowest points, but also a turning point.
“On Channel 7’s Spotlight program on 4 June, 2023, the applicant stated ‘Let’s light some fires’ and later said ‘Everything needs to be out there, in the open, so people can assess this for what it is’,” Justice Applegarth said.
“I hope that Channel 7 paid him or his solicitor a lot of money, for the consequences it has had on this application, if nothing else,” the judge quipped.
It was also revealed that while Dr Brown said Mr Lehrmann was at risk of suicide if he was named, he was not taking any medication for his depression, and Dr Brown was not treating him regularly.
The alleged rape case returns to the Toowoomba Magistrates Court on November 1.
