Too often, women are denied justice for sexual assault. The Lehrmann judgment marks progress | Jennifer Robinson

But Lee’s thorough and trauma-informed decision on Monday bucked that trend: it was a masterclass in the correct approach to fact-finding in defamation cases involving sexual assault.

Lehrmann had argued that Higgins’ “counterintuitive” behaviour after the night in question meant she couldn’t have been a victim of rape: he had bought her coffee, which she accepted, and she had sent him an email asking for his help on a work matter.

When it comes down to her word against his, it is all about credibility and Lee found that Lehrmann had none: he had a “tenuous” attachment to the truth, told “deliberate lies”, engaged in “Walter Mitty-like imaginings” about joining Asis and, most seriously of all, he had “defended the criminal charge on a false basis, lied to police” and instructed his lawyers “to cross-examine a complainant of sexual assault, in two legal proceedings, on a knowingly false premise”.

It is in the public interest for women to speak out – and we must protect it Higgins did not emerge unscathed: she was found to be “an unsatisfactory witness” in some respects, but not in relation to her account of the rape.

After years of fierce media debate about the case, which the judge rightly noted had become “a proxy for broader cultural and political conflicts”, we can now all say it: Lehrmann raped Higgins.

How many media organisations and journalists are going to report on women’s stories of gender-based violence after seeing the millions in legal costs Wilkinson and Network Ten expended to prove Higgins’ truth?