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AustraliaA resounding trial for rape ended for procedural flaw
The trial of an alleged rape case in the Australian Parliament, which had sparked protests across the country, ended abruptly on Thursday for procedural flaws.
Brittany Higgins before a protest in Canberra on March 15, 2021.
AFP
In 2021, Brittany Higgins reported being raped by Bruce Lehrmann in a minister’s office after a drunken evening in the early hours of March 23, 2019, which the 27-year-old defendant denies. The case made headlines in the Australian media. Bruce Lehrmann, a former political aide in Australia’s former centre-right government, denied this and pleaded not guilty.
While the jurors – eight women and four men – had been deliberating for five days, local Supreme Court President Lucy McCallum finally challenged them and found a procedural flaw in one detail.
According to Lucy McCallum, a prohibited document, in this case an academic paper on sexual assault, was discovered in a juror’s file. “Sometimes there is an incident that causes a trial to fail, which happened here,” Lucy McCallum explained.
#MeToo
A new trial could take place in February. After its outbreak, the case sparked protests in the country and several investigations, in the wake of the global #MeToo movement.
Former Defense Minister Linda Reynolds called her former collaborator a “dirty liar”, before “deeply regretting” her remarks, former Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison said in March 2021.
In early October, at the start of the trial, the plaintiff had testified to a culture of drunken parties at the heart of Australian political life. Five investigations also took place and resulted in a scathing denunciation of the prevailing sexism in the country’s political sphere. Two ministers from the former Conservative government were also called as witnesses during the trial.
(AFP)