It was meant to be one of those perfect weekends. Warm weather, getting ready with friends in your university share-house before spilling out the front door and making your way down to a music festival.
Monique Sellars, then 19, didn’t think twice as she lined up for entry at Yours And Owls in 2021, excited to make some core memories with friends. Then out of nowhere, a police sniffer dog leapt onto her back. A male officer grabbed her shoulder. “You need to come with me,” he said.
Moments later she was inside a makeshift police tent: three thin walls and a patch of grass for a floor. “You’re being strip-searched,” the officer told her. “Would you like a male or female to do it?”
Panicked, she answered female. Then a female officer arrived and told her to take off her pants, shoes and socks, leaving Sellars in just her corset top and G-string.
The officer walked around inspecting her body, putting her hands inside her top. Finding nothing, she then confiscated Sellars’ shoes and bag to inspect further, leaving Sellars to wait, half-naked, in the three-walled tent, where other police officers could see her.
“I was just sat there with no one explaining to me what was going on or anything like that for probably around 7 to 10 minutes before finally the female and the male came back. They gave me my bumbag, let me get dressed and then I was taken out for some general questioning, which was pretty condescending,” she said.
The police officers found nothing in Sellars’ possessions. In fact, more than 86 per cent of strip searches conducted by NSW Police over the past decade have found no illegal substances, according to Redfern Legal Centre.
Sellars is one of the 3,000 people taking part in a landmark Class Action that takes aim at the widespread use of police strip searches at NSW music festivals between 2016 and 2022.
Last month, lead plaintiff Raya Meredith was awarded $93,000 in damages after the Supreme Court found she was unlawfully strip-searched at Splendour in the Grass in 2018. Her legal team described her strip search as “akin to things that would happen during a sexual assault”, and said this finding sets a precedent for what “reasonable suspicion” to conduct a strip search actually means.
“This is the largest Class Action against a police force in Australian history. So that in itself is quite a big deal,” lawyer Jordyn Keating from Slater & Gordon told PEDESTRIAN.TV.
She said that for many young people, being strip searched at a music festival is their first encounter with police and it’s often an unpleasant and degrading one.
“We’ve heard from people who were strip searched in structures that lacked privacy. We’ve heard from minors who weren’t even offered to have a guardian present, which is their right at law. And we’ve also unfortunately heard of people being subjected to cavity searches,” she said.
“These are very sensitive matters and serious infringements on people’s privacy and dignity.”
The ruling has peeled back the curtain on what some have called a culture of overreach and humiliation baked into NSW police practice and marks a historic moment for police accountability in Australia.
For years, stories of young people being told to ‘squat and cough’ in makeshift tents have been a genuine source of fear for many festivalgoers, but this ruling draws a legal line in the sand.
(Image Getty)
In Meredith’s case, her lawyer told the court that during the search at Splendour in the Grass a female police officer told the then-27-year-old to pull down her top, take off her underwear and even to remove her tampon before being instructed to bend over. As she did, a male officer walked into the cubicle without knocking, carrying her bag that he was inspecting for substances. No drugs were found on her.
The NSW Police initially defended the search as lawful but later backflipped and admitted that the NSW Police had indeed acted unlawfully.
After Sellars was searched by police at the entry to Yours And Owls she was then allowed to go into the festival with her friends. Her experience happened so quickly that she barely had time to process it.
“I just went in and enjoyed the festival. Then that night I went home and that’s when it hit me and I had a bit of a breakdown. I had a meltdown to my roommates and they were really comforting,” she said.
The next day, she went back for day two of the festival but things felt different. She stayed alert and couldn’t shake the feeling of being watched. What should’ve been a carefree weekend had turned into a memory she’d never quite be able to leave behind.
When Supreme Court Justice Dina Yehia handed down her verdict for Meredith, her judgement it was firm. She said that while NSW Police have extraordinary powers granted to them by Parliament, those powers have limits. In her ruling, Justice Yehia clarified that strip searches can only be carried out if the circumstances are serious, urgent and necessary.
This ruling has set a new precedent. It means NSW Police now cannot justify a strip search because a sniffer dog sits down next to you or because an officer suspects a minor drug possession, and sets a new legal framework for when and how police can carry out the most invasive search in the field.
The ruling has made one thing crystal clear: the way cops conduct strip searches in NSW is about to change.
So what are your rights if you’re at a festival and the police want to conduct a strip search?
Keating said there are clear legal safeguards in place to protect your privacy and dignity when it comes to strip searches and these safeguards are not optional.
- If you are searched it must be carried out in a private and enclosed space.
- Cavity searches are strictly prohibited.
- If you’re under 18, you have the right to have a guardian of your choice present during the search.
- Anyone subjected to a strip search has the legal right to ask why it’s happening and to have police to explain to you how it’s justified under the law.
Keating said the team at Slater & Gordon are looking beyond music festivals to see where police may have also overstepped.
“We’re now looking closely at cases outside the festival setting,” she said. “Where those ‘serious and urgent’ tests haven’t been met, that’s absolutely something we’ll be considering for a further Class Action.”
While the ruling is a huge win, the case hasn’t totally wrapped just yet, as a further hearing is locked in for October 31. That’s when lawyers from Slater & Gordon and Redfern Legal Centre who are leading the Class Action, and the State of NSW will front court again to figure out what happens next for the rest of the members.
The lead plaintiff, Raya Meredith, has already been awarded damages, and now this next stage will determine how compensation is worked out for Sellars and the rest of the group. It’ll also give the State a chance to say whether it plans to appeal the ruling, though Keating hopes NSW Police “do the right thing” and bring this chapter of police abuse against the citizens of New South Wales to a close.
“This is a really important decision because no matter what happens next with further Class Actions and with policy changes implemented by the NSW police, this decision does hold the State of NSW accountable for an abuse of police power against its citizens,” she said.
Sellars hopes that this Class Action also paves the way for more police training so officers can understand that a strip search isn’t just a standard procedure but something that can be traumatic and leave lifelong scars.
“It’s a triggering experience. It’s so invasive of your privacy and just your rights as a human being. To put that in the context of going to a place that is meant to be full of joy and laughter and excitement and core memories, to kind of have that stripped with this really triggering experience is just a shame.”
The post ‘It’s A Triggering Experience’: Inside The Strip Search Case Rewriting Policing In NSW appeared first on PEDESTRIAN.TV .
