Brittany Higgins will continue giving evidence on day three of the trial for the man accused of raping her.
Bruce Lehrmann has pleaded not guilty to sexual intercourse without consent and is facing trial in the ACT Supreme Court.
Ms Higgins sat in the witness box for the first time on Wednesday afternoon after previously providing evidence via video-link from another room in the courthouse.
The court was shown CCTV footage from the night of the alleged assault and prosecutor Shane Drumgold asked Ms Higgins to identify several people in the video.
The footage showed Lehrmann and Ms Higgins drinking with colleagues at The Dock in Canberra on Friday, March 22, 2019.
Over the course of 4.5 hours Ms Higgins is seen to have 11 drinks.
She later told police her recollections from the night were “patchy” because of how drunk she was.
Ms Higgins told police she and Lehrmann went to a popular nightclub with two colleagues, who had also been at the bar, and then shared a taxi home in the early hours of Saturday morning.
On the way, Lehrmann told Ms Higgins he needed to pick up some documents from the office at Parliament House.
The pair worked as political staffers for then-minister Linda Reynolds.
Ms Higgins alleges after the two of them entered Senator Reynolds’ office she fell asleep on a couch and woke up to Lehrmann having sex with her.
Recounting the alleged rape, Ms Higgins said she felt “trapped” and “not human” as Lehrmann hovered over her.
“It didn’t feel like it was about me at all,” she said.
Later in a text message to her ex-boyfriend Ben Dillaway, Ms Higgins said she had been “barely lucid”.
“I really don’t feel like it was consensual at all,” she said.
She also expressed concern at the story becoming public knowledge and later told police she feared damaging the Liberal Party with the allegations.
The trial continues on Thursday.
© AAP 2022
