Brittany Higgins proud to keep her name amid fight against gender-based violence

Brittany Higgins says she decided not to change her name when she got married in 2024 because she is proud to be Brittany Higgins, the former Liberal staffer has revealed in Silenced, a documentary about violence against women which opened the Sydney film festival.

“When I got married I had this opportunity to change my name but I didn’t because I’m really proud to be Brittany Higgins,” she said in a highly emotional interview in the film. “Hopefully, this is just a footnote in my story and it’s not the headliner any more.”

Higgins walked the red carpet on Wednesday night alongside Australian barrister Jennifer Robinson, who represented Amber Heard in a defamation case brought by her ex-husband Johnny Depp.

Heard is also featured in the film, which is based on Robinson’s book How Many More Women?

Since 2021, when Higgins told the media she had been raped by a colleague on a minister’s couch in Parliament House two years earlier, the name “Brittany Higgins” has rarely been out of the headlines.

Her rape allegation against Bruce Lehrmann resulted in him going on trial in the ACT, but the trial was aborted due to juror misconduct. He denied the allegations.

The ACT prosecutor Shane Drumgold dropped the case has after receiving medical advice regarding Higgins.

Lehrmann later sued Network 10 and journalist Lisa Wilkinson for defamation over the story. He lost the case, and was found by the federal court to have, on the balance of probabilities, raped Higgins.

But the media scrutiny of Higgins did not subside.

Australian director Selina Miles’ film argues that defamation cases are being used around the world to silence women and the media from speaking about and reporting on gender-based violence.

Higgins tells the film-makers how she felt when she fronted a court in the ACT to give evidence in Lehrmann’s rape trial.

“I had heard that the process was ugly and I knew it would be terrible,” Higgins said. “They’ll take every bit of data that you have. Your diaries. My counselling records. My doctors’ visits. Everything. Getting ready for that process every morning, putting on clothes that make you look like someone who is rapeable, quote unquote, and yet someone who is also respectable, it’s so nerve-racking and so stressful.”

In the Sundance‑premiered documentary, Higgins talks about the toll the multiple cases and the media spotlight has taken on her mental health.

“There was a point where I almost took my life, because I didn’t want to do it any more,” she said of the ACT criminal trial.

“The police, luckily, intervened.”

After fleeing the country with her husband, David Sharaz, in 2023, the media tracked her down in France. “We didn’t realise the level we were being stalked,” Higgins said as footage shows journalists hanging around the property.

“We had a line of journos waiting for me to leave the house,” Higgins said. “I physically didn’t feel safe. There were threats to kill my dog.”

Lehrmann lost his last legal avenue to challenge his failed defamation case against Network 10 and Lisa Wilkinson after the high court dismissed his case in April 2024.

“It’s going to take a while to fully feel OK again,” Higgins said as she cradled her baby boy in a scene from the film. “But we’re getting there.”