{"id":27407,"date":"2024-04-16T02:30:11","date_gmt":"2024-04-16T02:30:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/2024\/04\/16\/validation-for-woman-who-said-she-was-raped-in-australias-parliament\/"},"modified":"2024-04-16T02:30:11","modified_gmt":"2024-04-16T02:30:11","slug":"validation-for-woman-who-said-she-was-raped-in-australias-parliament","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/2024\/04\/16\/validation-for-woman-who-said-she-was-raped-in-australias-parliament\/","title":{"rendered":"Validation for Woman Who Said She Was Raped in Australia\u2019s Parliament"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Validation<\/div>


\n<\/p>\n

\n
\n

When a young former government employee said on national television in 2021<\/a> that she had been sexually assaulted in Australia\u2019s Parliament two years earlier, it shocked the nation and unleashed a wave of anger aimed at the country\u2019s insular, male-dominated political establishment.<\/p>\n

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\u2019s rights<\/a> that ultimately contributed to the electoral ousting of Australia\u2019s conservative national government. But for years, there was no legal conclusion to the case.<\/p>\n

On Monday, it was finally \u2014 somewhat \u2014 settled, in a roundabout way.<\/p>\n

Mr. Lehrmann lost a civil defamation suit that he had filed against the television station that first broadcast Ms. Higgins\u2019s account, with the judge ruling that based on the available evidence, it was more likely than not that Mr. Lehrmann had raped her.<\/p>\n

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 \u2014 a legal term meaning whether something is more likely than not to have occurred.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n