When a young former government employee said on national television in 2021 that she had been sexually assaulted in Australia’s Parliament two years earlier, it shocked the nation and unleashed a wave of anger aimed at the country’s insular, male-dominated political establishment.
The employee, Brittany Higgins accused her colleague Bruce Lehrmann of raping her when she was inebriated, and said that she felt pressure from the government at the time not to report the assault.
She became a figurehead for a reckoning on women’s rights that ultimately contributed to the electoral ousting of Australia’s conservative national government.
The proceedings did not take place in a criminal court, and the offense did not have to be proven beyond a reasonable doubt.
Instead, the standard of proof was a balance of probabilities — a legal term meaning whether something is more likely than not to have occurred.
Persons:
Brittany Higgins, Bruce Lehrmann, Lehrmann, Higgins