A black schoolgirl suffered mental harm and felt “physically violated” when she was strip-searched at school by police, a misconduct hearing for three officers has been told.
The girl, who was 15 at the time and has been known as Child Q, was strip-searched in December 2020 at her school in Hackney, east London, while menstruating, having been wrongly accused of possessing cannabis.
A hearing that could result in three Metropolitan police officers being sacked for their alleged part in it was told on Tuesday that she will not be giving evidence “because of the psychological effects that this strip-search has had on her”.
Three officers, trainee detective constable Kristina Linge, PC Victoria Wray and PC Rafal Szmydynski, all deny gross misconduct over their treatment of her. All three were police constables at the time of the search, which allegedly took place without an appropriate adult present.
Outrage over her treatment led to protests by hundreds outside a town hall and a police station after a safeguarding review revealed she had arrived at school for a mock exam and was taken to the medical room to be strip-searched while teachers remained outside.
Elliot Gold, a barrister acting for the Independent Office for Police Conduct (IOPC), which is bringing the case, said: “The search involved the removal of Child Q’s clothing including her underwear, her bending over and, thus, the exposure of her intimate parts including, necessarily on the (IOPC) director general’s case, her vagina and anus.
“Child Q was menstruating at the time, as she told the two officers who searched her, but they nevertheless proceeded with the search. It is not disputed that Child Q’s sanitary pad was thereby exposed.
The object was to search for cannabis but no cannabis was found, he said.
The point where Child Q said she was on her period was “an obvious opportunity for the two officers to reconsider the necessity and proportionality of the search” but they instead told her “we are all women here”, or said that they were all “females”, and thereby treated Child Q as an adult rather than a child, Gold said.
Linge and Szmydynski performed a search that exposed the girl’s intimate parts when this was “disproportionate in all the circumstances”, according to the allegations. Linge and Wray allegedly performed or allowed the search in a manner that was “unjustified, inappropriate, disproportionate, humiliating and degrading”.
Gold also told the panel: “Black schoolchildren are more likely to be treated as older and less vulnerable or in need of protection and support than their white peers.”
He said that sacking the officers would be “justified” if the allegations were proved, adding: “Their actions and omissions have resulted in Child Q suffering harm to her mental health and feeling physically violated.”
The alleged actions of the officers had brought discredit on the Metropolitan police and upset race relations yet further between the police and minority communities,” added Gold.
Scotland Yard has previously apologised over the incident.
