After the interview aired, Lehrmann was charged with sexual intercourse without consent, but the trial was abandoned in 2022 due to juror misconduct and not revived due to fears about Higgins’ mental health.
Without a trial and a means to clear his name, Lehrmann turned to defamation action, claiming that Network Ten and “The Project” presenter Lisa Wilkinson damaged his reputation by providing enough information in the program for him to be identified, though he was not named.
Network Ten and Wilkinson chose to fight the charge, mounting a truth defense, meaning that to win, the network’s lawyers needed to prove that on the balance of probabilities the rape happened.
Lee found Monday that the two had sex that night, but Higgins was so inebriated she couldn’t possibly have given her consent – and that Lehrmann didn’t seek to obtain it.
“I’m satisfied that it is more likely than not that Mr Lehrmann’s state of mind was such that he was so intent upon gratification to be indifferent to Miss Higgins’ consent,” said Lee.
The ruling delivers a devastating blow to Lehrmann’s attempt to clear his name. As Lee put it in his judgement: “Having escaped the lion’s den, Mr Lehrmann made the mistake of going back for his hat.”
There needs to be tightening up of the trial by media.
If someone is guilty there is a legal system to deal with it. The media is not that system.
The legal system didn’t deal with it, as per fucking usual. He decided that he would use that fact to prove he was innocent, giving the court an opportunity to explain very carefully why he is quite clearly guilty.
This was a huge political scandal. It’s not reasonable to declare that the media should not have reported it.
Wut. This is journalism doing its job. Police are pretty bad at their jobs, prosecutors included. They often can’t be bothered to seek charges. So when someone else did after some quality journalism, that proved there was enough evidence to indict. Just because they botched the criminal case does not mean he didn’t do it.
I didn’t claim he didn’t do it.
I’m just saying trial by media is no good thing.
This is an easy statement to make but context matters. In this case, he was not named by the media but had they not covered the story, he would never have been charged because it suited the political establishment to do nothing at all.
It was poor form for a media group to air an interview of someone in a current and high profile court case. The affect of the media attention prevented a fair trial and was completely unprofessional from Wilkinson.
What high profile court case?
I’m not saying that you’re wrong, but this comment reads like you didn’t read the article and have no idea what it’s about.
The guy accused of rape sued a news channel for reporting that a woman claimed she was raped without specifically naming him because it was easy to infer he was the guy who did it. And then a judge ruled that it wasn’t defamation because he clearly raped her.
I’m pretty critical of the media, but in this particular case, they didn’t do anything to this guy, this was all on him.
It seemed like they made those comments way in advance of any judges verdict.
What comments? That a woman was raped? Find another hill.
There needs to be increased accountability for rapists.
If someone is guilty there is a legal system to deal with it. It should consistently do that.