Brittany Higgins has condemned the attitudes of the police who investigated her rape claim against former colleague Bruce Lehrmann in a scathing statement released Wednesday.

In a social media post in reply to a story published by The Australian, Ms Higgins claimed police were disgraced by their conduct toward her case, rather than the accusations of former director of public prosecutions Shane Drumgold.

“These men were absolutely awful to me. They made me feel violated at every turn,” she said of police in the statement.

“They cast judgements about the merits of my advocacy and regularly reiterated the reasons why they thought that I shouldn’t proceed with pressing charges.”

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Mr Drumgold resigned last week after findings against his own conduct in the case were leaked to media.

Mr Lehrmann pleaded not guilty to sexually assaulting Ms Higgins in the Parliament House office of Coalition minister Linda Reynolds after a night out drinking with friends in March 2019.

Mr Drumgold ultimately dropped the prosecution against Mr Lehrmann because of his fears about the impact of a second trial on Ms Higgins’ mental health.

“These police never wanted to charge [Lehrmann] despite the fact that no one, not even the defence, made an application contending that the prosecution was not properly commenced,” Ms Higgins said.

“They made a fun folder full of unfounded claims in a literal attempt to discredit me as a permissible rape victim to the office of the DPP,” she said.

A board of inquiry set up to examine accusations from police and prosecutors about each other’s conduct during Mr Lehrmann’s high-profile rape trial made “several serious findings of misconduct” against Mr Drumgold.

However,  the inquiry headed by former Queensland judge Walter Sofronoff did find Mr Drumgold was right to go ahead with the prosecution of Mr Lehrmann based on the information available to police and his office.

A report on the case tendered to the Lehrmann inquiry by Detective Superintendent Scott Moller contained police opinions that Ms Higgins was an evasive and manipulative witness.

Ms Higgins on Wednesday claimed police wrongly handed her private counselling notes to the Mr Lehrmann’s lawyers, which police admitted to and Mr Sofronoff said was not done intentionally.

“I will always remember how small I felt having five senior police officers I’ve never met in a room belittling me – after I had just spent hours giving evidence in a second EIC [evidence in chief] interview,” Ms Higgins said, referring to a meeting in which Moller told her the investigation would’ve been “for nothing” if it fell over due to media interference.

“I do not celebrate the misfortune of others. However, these officers were disgraced by their own conduct, not by the DPP,” she said.

The Sofronoff report, formally released Monday, made several recommendations related to improving police policies, including defining the threshold required to charge a suspect, updates to how police store victim counselling notes and training on compiling briefs of evidence.

The government has agreed to implement eight of the 10 recommendations.

It agreed in principle to the final two, subject to further consultation with the office of the director of public prosecutions, ACT Policing, victims of crime commissioner and legal stakeholders.

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