Brittany Higgins’ mother described her daughter as a “broken soul” in emotional testimony at Bruce Lehrmann’s Federal Court defamation trial on Monday.

Kelly May Higgins said her daughter came to live with her soon after the 2021 report on The Project that disclosed her rape allegations against Lehrmann.

She described Brittany Higgins as being totally different person to the woman she was before the alleged sexual assault.

“Her joy was gone, her desire was gone, her personal happiness was gone,” she said.

“She is a broken soul,” Kelly Higgins said.

In November 2019, Higgins first disclosed the rape allegation to her mother and her mother’s then-partner at a restaurant.

“I’d just been told a mother’s worst nightmare,” Kelly Higgins said.

Kelly Higgins said her daughter’s revelation was a ‘mother’s worst nightmare’. Photo: Instagram

Lehrmann claims The Project report is defamatory and denies that any sexual contact between himself and Higgins occurred.

He is suing both The Project‘s then-host Lisa Wilkinson and Network 10 for defamation.

The trial has run for over a week and a half and is expected to go into the final week before Christmas, the court heard on Monday.

Brittany Higgins earlier made confronting statements regarding her inability to consent days after being allegedly raped on a minister’s couch by Lehrmann.

Former departmental liaison officer Christopher Payne said he saw a teary-eyed Higgins walking past his office early in the week after a reported security incident at Parliament House on Saturday, March 23, 2019.

He told the Federal Court that the junior media adviser spoke of waking up on a couch in the office of her then-boss, Senator Linda Reynolds, to find fellow staffer Lehrmann on top of her.

“I said, ‘Did he rape you?’,” Payne said.

“Her response was, ‘I could not have consented. It would have been like f—ing a log’.”

These “confronting” words by a young woman in tears in his office stuck with him, Payne said.

Now a government relationship manager for the Australian Institute of Marine Science, Payne was giving evidence as Network Ten and journalist Lisa Wilkinson tried to establish the truth of the rape allegation featured in a February 2021 broadcast of The Project.

Lehrmann was charged in August 2021 over the alleged rape, but his criminal trial in the ACT Supreme Court was derailed by juror misconduct.

Prosecutors did not seek a second trial, citing concerns for Higgins’ mental health.

Lehrmann is also before Queensland courts accused of raping another woman twice in Toowoomba in October 2021.

He has not yet entered a plea, but his lawyers have indicated he denies the charges.

1800 RESPECT 1800 737 732

National Sexual Abuse and Redress Support Service 1800 211 028

– with AAP