Brittany Higgins made a rare red carpet appearance on Wednesday evening at the Sydney Film Festival, attending the premiere of the documentary Silenced.
The film, which first premiered at the Sundance Film Festival earlier this year, has been available in the United States but is only now being released in Australia. Silenced documents an international human rights lawyer's fight against the weaponisation of defamation laws to silence survivors, and features interviews with Hollywood star Amber Heard and Brittany Higgins.
Higgins arrived arm-in-arm with human rights lawyer Jennifer Robinson, both smiling for the cameras. Earlier this year, the documentary was issued a warning by lawyers representing former Liberal senator Linda Reynolds. Reynolds, who was Higgins' boss, successfully sued the former staffer for defamation last year over a series of social media posts made in 2022.
In February, lawyers for Bruce Lehrmann sent a concerns notice to the film's producers. Lehrmann's lawyer, Zali Burrows, requested a copy of the film, a transcript, and the removal of all promotional material, citing the need to preserve Lehrmann's right to a fair trial and alleging that the film could prejudice the jury pool in relation to separate criminal proceedings in Queensland. In April, the High Court of Australia rejected Lehrmann's bid to challenge the Federal Court's ruling, definitively ending his defamation case.
Lehrmann had launched a defamation suit against Network 10 and journalist Lisa Wilkinson over Higgins' interview on The Project in February 2021, in which she alleged she was raped by a colleague inside the office of her then-boss, Senator Linda Reynolds. Justice Michael Lee found it more likely than not that Lehrmann was intent on having sex with Higgins and did not care whether she consented. In a statement, Higgins said the High Court decision brought finality to a painful chapter, acknowledging that her case was unusual only because it received extensive media attention.
