How the first two days in court set the tone for Linda Reynolds’ defamation trial against Brittany Higgins

Drawn into public hatred, scandal, disgust and contempt.

Reduced in the eyes of right-thinking members of the community.

Credit, character and reputation severely damaged.

These are just some of the ways Senator Linda Reynolds says she was hurt by a series of social media posts her former staffer Brittany Higgins made last year.

Now, more than five years after a young woman alleged she was raped by her colleague Bruce Lehrmann on a couch in the senator’s office — something Mr. Lehrmann vehemently denies and has not been convicted of — Senator Reynolds has a chance to right what she sees as a great wrong that was done to her.

But in the process she risks losing her home and potentially her reputation in what promises to be a bitter defamation battle in the Supreme Court of Western Australia, with both sides showing little intention of saving money.

This was clearly demonstrated on the first day when the senator’s lawyer, Martin Bennett, said Ms Higgins and her partner David Sharaz had cast Senator Reynolds as the villain “in their fictional story of a political rape cover-up”.

He said Ms Higgins had made a number of “obvious lies” about Senator Reynolds, including that she had failed to support her following her rape, had tried to silence victims of sexual assault and had waged a campaign of harassment against Ms Higgins.

Mr Bennett said Ms Higgins’s “truth” was completely different from “the truth” and added that her feelings on the subject did not correspond with the objective facts of the case.

The harsh statements were echoed by Ms Higgins’ barrister, Rachael Young SC, who delivered her opening speech to the court on Monday.

She said Mr Bennett’s comments about the fairy tale villain were “inappropriate, harassing and re-traumatising”.

“In that context, this case is not and never has been a fairy tale,” Ms Young said, with the comments “trivialising” Ms Higgins’ reasons for going public with her story in the first place.

What happened in the parliament building

In its simplest form, a defamation case pits two wronged women against each other, two women of different ages and life experiences who “are not and never have been equal,” as Ms. Young noted on Monday.

One is a seasoned senator, former federal minister, army reserve brigadier general and senior Liberal Party figure, the other is a “junior worker with no job security who claimed she was raped at work”.

Mr Bennett made it clear that the defamation case did not concern the rape itself, which was proven on the balance of probabilities to have occurred in the previous civil case.

Yet this traumatic event is always the theme that dominates the week’s courtroom events.

Both sides gave a fairly detailed account of the events that took place that night in Parliament Building and the different ways in which the two women perceived the event.

According to Mr Bennett’s account, Senator Reynolds did not know where in her office Ms Higgins said the rape occurred. She told Judge Paul Tottle that “knowing the imagination of young people” it could have been anywhere in the ministerial office complex.

“It’s a tiny two-seater couch. It’s not something you can lie down on and fall asleep on,” he said.

“You need to curl up and lie down.”

Ms Young described the comments as “tasteless”.

It’s unlikely that any of them will come out of this unscathed.