The Brittany Higgins wannabees

It is hardly surprising that young women have been encouraged to come forward with rape accusations based on the flimsiest, most contradictory of evidence.

An absolute classic has been playing out in the ACT Supreme Court in the last week; a case which has received remarkably little reporting, when you consider that Alexander Matters, the accused, like Bruce Lehrmann worked in Canberra politics. The difference is that here the young man was an electorate officer for a Labor MP, which may explain the disinterest from much of our media only keen on exposing conservatives in trouble.

Alex Matters has just been found not guilty in a unanimous decision by a Canberra jury – one of the wokest parts of Australia. That’s a miracle, given that it would only take one true believer to result in a hung jury. Here a decision was reached after only 5-6 hours of jury deliberation. And the reason? The accuser was revealed, in the words of Alex’s barrister as “unreliable and unresponsive,” her evidence full of “lies and inconsistencies” which were exposed in court. This Brittany Higgins Wannabee didn’t further the feminist cause at all – hence the stony silence from most of our media.

When the alleged rape happened, Alexander Matters was an ANU law student who started a “fuck-buddy” relationship with a student activist, a young woman who had an official role advocating for rape victims, and who had taken part in the Women’s March alongside Higgins.

The couple had been having occasional hook-ups for months before the alleged rape took place in a college dorm room in May 2021. Their first hook-up happened after Ms Advocate told friends that she wanted to have “revenge sex” to punish a guy she’d been seeing who’d annoyed her by leaving town for reserve army training. Her text to friends suggested she’d “have sex with Alex Matters to get back at him.” But that experience clearly proved pleasing and she came back for many repeat performances.

The “friends with benefits” relationship proceeded for four months. Then in September Ms Advocate discovered Matters had been charged with sexual assault following an accusation by another woman – a case which would ultimately be dropped by the well-known DPP Shane Drumgold SC.

Ms Advocate faced a dilemma. As Matter’s barrister Steven Whybrow SC suggested in court, it “wasn’t a good look” for a student women’s advocate to be known to be “sleeping with someone alleged to be a rapist.”

Sure enough, within days Ms Advocate was reporting a rape to police. She alleged that, back in May, on one occasion when they had sex Matters hadn’t stopped exactly when she asked him to – he thrust three more times. She claimed she didn’t give consent for him to ejaculate on her breasts and that it was rough sex that left her bloody and bruised for days.

Mind you, before actually fronting up to the police, Ms Advocate had been discussing via text with friends whether this amounted to sexual assault. “I think I might have been raped too. I don’t know,” she told her godmother.  

As the judge pointed out in his summing up, Ms Advocate was an “over-sharer” and it was her text messages which ultimately brought her undone. It was revealed in court that within 24 hours of the alleged rape, she’d sent Matters an audio message saying, “Fuck me, Daddy?”  and another saying, “I want you to fuck me so hard.”

For months she continued having sex with him, complaining to her friends that she couldn’t help herself. “Bro, I keep sleeping with Alex, what the fuck is wrong with me,” she asked one friend. Her response to another who suggested she should cease the hook-ups with Matters. “No, no, I like it”.  

Despite the prosecutors’ best efforts to play up the rough, forceful sex inflicted on her, the forensic evidence of a bloody blanket proved unconvincing, given that the blanket was examined four months after the event, making it impossible to distinguish between stains from that early encounter and other participants in Ms Advocate’s lovelife. Her claim to police that after the alleged rape she had cried, had a shower and gone to sleep was proved in court to be a lie. She’d been busily texting friends for hours about other relationships. And within hours, despite grumbling to Matters via text that, “It still hurts. You really went for it”, by that evening she was suggesting: “Surely we fuck again?”