Toowoomba's Brittany Higgins Wannabee

According to her they had sex not once but twice without her giving permission to not use a condom. Lehrmann will obviously plead not guilty to these charges.

It's understood he then drove her to the pharmacy to get the morning after pill, waiting in the car before going for coffee with her. She signed the standard pharmacy form which indicated that she had not been sexually assaulted.

Note that this case has been languishing on the police books since late November 2021, with the police showing no initial interest in pursuing the case. Lehrmann had no idea that another rape accusation had been made until well into 2022. Over a year after the allegation was made to police, Toowoomba police rang Lehrmann's lawyers and informed them they would be commencing criminal proceedings against him - on the same day the Queensland Government released a report critical of police handling of domestic violence.

This year there's been all sorts of high jinks over the complainant's phone which police for months refused to hand over to prosecutors. Then prosecutors also withheld the phone records from Lehrmann's legal team for over two months whilst they undertook their own redactions. Lehrman's lawyers finally received the heavily redacted phone records at the eleventh hour, the night before his appeal for the suppression order in the Supreme Court.

It was only two months ago that our entire country witnessed Sofronoff tear strips off Higgins trial prosecutor Shane Drumgold for treating criminal litigation as "a poker game in which a prosecutor can hide the cards," after the prosecutor failed to disclose key evidence to the defence. But it seems Queenslanders are a law unto themselves.

This was on display last week when Supreme Court Justice Peter Applegarth decided to lift the suppression order, disregarding expert evidence from Lehrmann's long-time psychologist about possible "serious adverse consequences" to his mental health. The psychologist had pointed to Lehrmann's extremely depressed state and the extreme suicidal ideation he experienced after the Higgins case was made public in 2021, leading to him being admitted to a mental health facility.

The psychologist wrote: "For over two years he has endured media hounding, public defamation of character, loss of friendships and support, relocating on numerous occasions, and a loss of a sense of safety and security in normal public places." He mentioned that the Sofronoff inquiry, and ongoing strain of constant legal battles has meant Lehrmann's mental health has fluctuated considerably this year but warned of the potentially serious psychological effects if he had further public shaming over the Toowoomba case.

Applegarth used Lehrmann's confident stance in the Spotlight interview to dismiss the psychologist's assessment regarding the mental health risk. "I hope that Channel 7 paid him or his solicitor a lot of money for the consequences it has had on this application, if nothing else," the judge quipped, to the delight of the media who naturally were put out that Channel 7 had secured the exclusive interview.

Lehrmann was obviously putting on a brave face at the time of the Channel 7 interview perhaps because the dark clouds had briefly lifted – Higgins' case had fallen apart leaving him legally an innocent man. For a judge to dismiss the potential impact of another nationwide public shaming over the Toowoomba case is utterly shameful.

As with the Higgins case, once again we are witnessing a disgraceful trial by media, as details of the Toowoomba case are leaked, many of which are apparently contrary to the complainant's own statement to police. In our believe-the-victim culture it appears that the truth counts for very little.