Bruce Lehrmann ran frantically down the road and left Sydney moments after he was branded a rapist by a Federal Court judge and sought refuge from the media inside a police station.
Lehrmann found out he lost his long-running defamation case against Network Ten and Lisa Wilkinson on Monday morning when Judge Michael Lee handed down his 324-page judgment.
The judge determined, on a balance of probabilities, that Lehrmann raped Brittany Higgins inside Parliament House in the early hours of March 23, 2019, despite his insistence to the contrary.
The results were an unexpected blow to Lehrmann, who initiated legal action against himself and apparently couldn’t wait to get out of court on Monday.
Along with his lawyers, he attacked from the courtroom, dodging television cameras and microphone-wielding journalists, and refusing to answer questions such as: “How humiliating is this for you?” And it was worth it?’
They chased him on foot across the street to his solicitor’s office, before leaving the office, getting into a borrowed Mazda CX9 and driving to the Central Coast.
A freelance photographer told WhatsNew2Day Australia that Lehrmann knew he was being followed and drove around Lane Cove and the M1 motorway trying, unsuccessfully, to lose the cameras.
Bruce Lehrmann (pictured) ran from court to his lawyer’s office on Monday, before fleeing Sydney.
Bruce Lehrmann sought refuge inside Gosford Police Station (pictured)
After a chase along Sydney’s lower north shore, the pair ended up traveling along North Connex before a woman in a white vehicle appeared trying to block the photographer’s view.
According to the independent journalist, the objective was to block his view so that he could not see Lehrmann leaving the highway.
But that didn’t work either.
Eventually they followed him to Avoca, which is about 100 kilometers north of Sydney.
“He arrived north of Avoca, passed a police station, then called out to some police officers who were passing by and made another turn,” the photographer said.
—He followed the road and went around a dead end, then passed the police station again and continued like that.
Lehrmann then approached a police officer for help, before the photographer shouted out his car window: “We’re news and that’s Bruce Lehrmann.”
He said: “The policeman looked at me and he looked at him, and he didn’t care.”
Lehrmann then abandoned the car in a prohibited area outside Gosford police station and ran inside, before officers took him to an undisclosed location for his own safety.
Brittany Higgins was wearing a white sheath dress (pictured) the night she alleges she was raped. Bruce Lehrmann appears next to her in a light blue shirt.
Police later called the photographer to verify that he was a journalist and not a dangerous stalker.
When asked how Lehrmann was doing, the officer said, “Yeah, he’s fine.”
The police are not investigating the matter.
The situation unfolded hours after Lehrmann’s defamation case collapsed.
Lehrmann sued over an interview Higgins did with Wilkinson on Network Ten’s The Project in February 2021, during which she aired her rape allegations against him for the first time.
He was not named in that broadcast, but claimed friends and colleagues were able to identify him as Ms Higgins’ rapist. He strongly denied raping Ms Higgins and launched a defamation action in a bid to clear her name.
However, on Monday, Judge Lee found that Lehrmann took Ms Higgins back to a “secluded place”, the ministerial suite, after a night out with colleagues in order to have sex with her.
He said Lehrmann was “intent” on having sex with Ms Higgins, knew she was very drunk and did not consider whether she consented to sex.