After doing the interview after which accepting a Logie for it on behalf of the community, Wilkinson gave a speech on the tv awards ceremony praising Higgins for her “unwavering braveness”.
The decide in command of Lehrmann’s pending prison trial was livid. She publicly lambasted Wilkinson and postponed the trial in an effort to provide Lehrmann procedural equity.
However Wilkinson instructed the courtroom that she had been requested to provide the Logies speech by Ten, and proof confirmed that Channel Ten’s personal attorneys had checked it and pronounced it wonderful.
The community’s CEO, Beverley McGarvey, even texted her after she gave it, saying “stunning speech”.
“All of them had authorized the speech, however I used to be the one accused … I, alone, of derailing the rape case,” Wilkinson stated in courtroom this week.
Channel Ten made a public assertion on the time saying it “absolutely supported” Wilkinson, however the courtroom heard that behind the scenes it refused to say publicly that the community’s company counsel had legalled the speech and ticked it off.
The media, as Wilkinson stated, “trashed” her.
Ten’s change of coronary heart on Wednesday will go some approach to amending the improper, though it hasn’t but been determined how a lot of Wilkinson’s authorized prices – regarded as across the $2 million mark – Ten might be accountable for.
However the reputational harm Wilkinson has suffered is more durable to expunge, and 5 months after the Logies controversy, she was faraway from her place as co-host of The Mission, one thing she stated was devastating.
She has not labored since.
This newest stoush between Wilkinson and Channel Ten was one other occasion of the excessive emotion and conflicted pursuits that infuse the Lehrmann/Higgins matter.
And it’s not over but.
Working concurrently with this matter is the case former ACT director of public prosecutions Shane Drumgold is bringing to overturn the findings of an inquiry into the Lehrmann trial which was crucial of his conduct.
Drumgold was additionally the topic of a whole lot of adverse media protection, and stop his job.
And Senator Linda Reynolds, in whose workplace the alleged rape allegedly occurred, is suing Higgins and her companion David Sharaz for defamation.
Justice Michael Lee of the Federal Courtroom is predicted handy down a judgment on Lehrmann’s substantive defamation matter as early as March.
That call will both function vindication of Lehrmann as an accused rapist, or vindication of the journalism of Wilkinson and Channel Ten.
If it’s the latter, you may guess they gained’t be celebrating collectively.
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