Five years after Brittany Higgins went public about her alleged Parliament House rape, lawsuit after lawsuit has left egos and reputations bruised while lawyers pocketed millions.
Ms Higgins' February 2021 interview with journalist Lisa Wilkinson on The Project led to an aborted criminal trial against her alleged rapist Bruce Lehrmann as well as various civil cases and inquiries.
Apart from affecting the main players, there have also been wider ramifications for the general public, including victim-survivors.
The 31-year-old Ms Higgins initially experienced popularity, feted for sparking a national conversation about sexism and sexual abuse.
Her testimony during a Federal Court defamation case brought by Lehrmann against Network Ten helped prove, on the balance of probabilities, that he raped her.
However, her claims of a federal government cover-up of the incident were criticised in a judgment by Justice Michael Lee as "objectively short on facts but long on speculation".
She has fared better in the public eye than Lehrmann who had his reputation shattered by the ill-fated decision to sue Ten.
Justice Lee described the case as an "omnishambles," quipping that having escaped the lion's den, the 30-year-old made the mistake of going back for his hat.
The case was also dismissed on appeal with a proposed special leave application to the High Court being flagged.
Since going public, Ms Higgins has paid a hefty price financially, becoming bankrupt after losing a Western Australia Supreme Court defamation case brought by her former boss Linda Reynolds.
A judge awarded the ex-Liberal Senator almost $350,000 in damages plus interest, over defamatory social media posts claiming she mismanaged the rape incident and harassed Ms Higgins.
The 31-year-old has also been ordered to pay Ms Reynolds' estimated $1 million legal bill.
These significant sums will be stripped from whatever remains of the $2.4 million settlement Ms Higgins reached with the federal government over the alleged rape.
Her husband David Sharaz has also been declared bankrupt after Ms Reynolds successfully sued him for defamation.
While the ex-senator has emerged victorious from her lawsuits, publicly she has been seen as punching down at a vulnerable rape survivor.
Lehrmann is himself on the verge of bankruptcy with a $2 million legal bill owed to Ten looming if his High Court appeal is unsuccessful.
His two other defamation cases against the ABC and News Corp were settled without any admissions of liability, with Lehrmann paid around $450,000 towards his legal costs.
The public scrutiny behind the rape claims has also entangled other figures, tainting their reputation.
An ACT government inquiry into the Lehrmann prosecution found the territory's top prosecutor Shane Drumgold, had lost objectivity over the case and knowingly lied about a note of his meeting with Wilkinson.
Mr Drumgold resigned and subsequently found some success through launching challenges in the ACT Supreme Court, which found the inquiry carried bias against him.
The head of that inquiry, former judge Walter Sofronoff KC, was himself found to have engaged in serious corrupt conduct by leaking confidential material to journalists.
His own legal challenge to this finding failed in the Federal Court.
Even Wilkinson was criticised by Justice Lee for her conduct, including missteps in properly vetting Ms Higgins' claims and a highly publicised Logies speech which caused Lehrmann's criminal trial to be delayed by months.
The very public controversy swirling around the case has been a double-edged sword for victim-survivors around Australia.
While some rape victims were encouraged to speak out due to Ms Higgins' bravery, others were pushed into the shadows after seeing how she was treated, Dr Rachael Burgin, CEO of Rape and Sexual Assault Research and Advocacy, told AAP.
"You can't look at the Brittany Higgins case and say anything but every aspect of every system has just failed her," the criminology senior lecturer said.
Dr Burgin has conducted a review into the police response to sexual assault claims in the ACT after the Higgins' allegation surfaced.
She has made a number of recommendations to the ACT government to improve the rates that sexual assault cases are investigated and charged, and to improve police practices in this area.
Those working in the federal Parliament House now have better workplace protections thanks to recommendations from an inquiry prompted by the Higgins' allegation.
A report into this was released by Sex Discrimination Commissioner Kate Jenkins over four years ago in November 2021.
The new rules and bodies that have been created since were large, requiring negotiations between the parties, political scientist Maria Maley said.
"Its been very challenging, it's been a major institutional change," she told AAP.
Dr Maley said the government had not implemented all of the Jenkins recommendations despite saying it would do so, and had failed to conduct a progress review in 2025 as promised.
As such, it was still not known whether the changes had actually made a difference, the ANU senior lecturer said.
More insight may come in the first quarter of 2026 when results from an inaugural survey conducted by the Parliamentary Workplace Support Service are expected to be released.
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National Sexual Abuse and Redress Support Service 1800 211 028
