General Discussions

[Thryleon]

You must have extraordinary powers of observation to determine people’s intent from a couple of seconds of CCTV footage.

And yet eyewitnesses at the nightclub and security at Parliament House gave evidence that clearly contradicts your assessment of Higgins and Lehrmann’s state of sobriety.

Unless you sat through the entire trial and carefully considered every piece of material evidence and every sentence of testimony from Higgins, Lehrmann and all of the witnesses, you’re not really in a position to dispute Justice Lee’s findings.

Of course you can have an opinion, but it’s not worth much in this particular context.

Not sure about all of that but that version of events aired on TV showed plenty of footage, before and after of all parties.  I've seen messy people before who might look like they're being taken advantage of, and the footage that I've seen of both parties on the night suggests that potentially this is not correct.

Want me to explain Lehrmanns credit card?  Easy.  Did he buy drinks just for Brittany?  How would one know who consumed those drinks once they've left the bar?

Did Higgins consume them all?  Again unsure but as she walked into parliament house on the security footage I've seen with my own eyes, I dont think she was anywhere near out of it.  To the contrary she was walking in barefoot, holding her shoes, and able to balance herself quite easily. 

Now from the transcripts:

  Mr Fairweather recalled a general smell of alcohol but did not think that the visitors were overly affected (by which he meant slurring, falling over, vomiting level drunk) so as to be refused entry (Fairweather (at [29]–[32], [62])). He considered the scale of intoxication to be “very moderate” and not “heavily intoxicated” because otherwise he would have refused entry (T1172.4–27). Mr Fairweather, although an experienced security guard, was not a breathalyser in human form. He said at the time they were “half pissed” (Ex R69). I have no doubt his evidence was given genuinely, but without prolonged examination and complete information as to what had occurred earlier in the evening (and although Mr Lehrmann may only have been “half pissed”), he mistakenly but honestly underestimated the extent of the intoxication of Ms Higgins. Similarly, Ms Anderson realised Ms Higgins was intoxicated after she observed her struggling to get her shoes back on coming through the metal detector (Anderson (at [27]–[28])) and later recorded this observation in her incident report (Ex R67).

The security guards shared my opinion.

Now this was later changed based on what has been perceived to occur.  It seeks to absolve and ratify.  Absolve security from not realising how drunk she was as well as explain how drunk people can pull it together, but what this does do is actually point to Higgins being no where near completely out to lunch.

Was she raped?  I dont know.

Was she taken advantage of?  Maybe.

I'm not convinced this is rape, but I wouldn't be putting myself in these situations to begin with, on either side of that fence.