What Reynolds wants, according to the referenced story, is that nobody can talk about being sexually assaulted unless they go through the whole thing with the police (which everyone, including the police acknowledge does the victim more harm than good).yep.
And a reminder we are talking about Senator Linda Reynolds. A long standing Federal Senator and senior government minister here who joined the Liberal Party while at Uni and who, prior to becoming a Senator, held various senior positions in the Liberal Party including as a a campaign manager, deputy federal director, ministerial advisor, notably as chief of staff and senior adviser.
In those high profile political roles you would expect to be subject to targeted personal attacks on mainstream and social media, some of them certainly vicious and many factually wrong. Not to mention the attacks and rumour mongering made under parliamentary privilege that come to Ministers in the mad house of Parliamentary question time. A former Minister and still serving Senator who appeared on the ABC series Nemesis just a couple of months back to talk about her torrid experiences under successive Liberal PMs, including the bullying and victimisation of women MPs in her own party.
So knowing Reynolds' political background and career you would think that the social media posts from Brittany Higgins would have to be pretty bloody nasty/hateful/spiteful for her to take highly costly and public defamation action including diplomatic action in a foreign country to freeze the assets of Ms Higgins and her partner.
Especially given her target in here is a former fellow Liberal Party member and her own former staffer, who was raped in Reynolds office from a fellow Reynolds staffer after hours and went through years of humiliating highly public court and media appearances to have her rape formally acknowledged and her rapist finally called out.
Here are the two social media posts from Brittany Higgins that Linda Reynolds used to start her defamation action and which she says contributed to the 'enormous emotional cost' to her and her family:
One of them was an instagram post from Ms Higgins on 4 July last year referencing an SMH article where Reynolds accuses Federal Attorney General Mark Dreyfus of denying her government funding for legal assistance for representation during the Sofronoff Inquiry. Higgins' instagram post said:
“This is from a current Australian senator who continues to harass me through the media and in the parliament,”
There was another post from Higgins on Twitter on 20 July last year that is also the subject of Reynolds' action:
I'll leave it to others to make their own judgement.
My own view on a current serving Federal MP and former Minister taking defamation action in this way and under these circumstances has been made clear in this thread many times.
SO Reynolds is ignoring everything LetHerSpeak is about. It's like Reynolds hadn't followed anything to do with this for the last decade.
So Reynolds IS responsible for perpetuating the cover-up of sexual assaults by not letting people speak about it.
I honestly cannot see how she thinks this is defamation. It's straight-forward.
Sexual Assault happens lots, but isn't reported enough so too many people get away with it.
Reynolds wants it reported less, therefore more people will get away with it.
For somebody in her position (and with a rape having occurred in her office) to be so oblivious to the systemic problems she wants to perpetuate, points at either complete indifference, or vindictiveness.
