REAL consequences.
That’s what Child Q and her mother want. That is what her daughter’s scandalous treatment is crying out for.
Accountability for the officers, the teachers who deserted the 15-year-old, leaving her to be strip-searched in school while on her period, and an examination of the numbers that suggest this is far from an isolated incident.
Over 9,000 kids were strip searched by the Metropolitan Police over the past five years according to a Freedom of Information request. The fact that 35 of them were children under 12 years old must surely chill you to the bone.
Why are our kids being violated in this way? Why are our girls and boys having their dignity sullied in such a disgraceful manner?
The data reveals the strip searches are in custody but where are the numbers showing us how many are conducted at schools, where Child Q’s ordeal took place?
And why isn’t there more anger over it from the people with the powerful voices? Labour MP’s and celebrities are standing up to be counted but why isn’t there the kind of fury we see from government ministers - even the Prime Minister - when Premier League footballers kick cats and behave badly? What do are you going to do about Child Q?
Because the adultification of our Black girls remains a scandal in plain sight.
Shoving hapless minister Kemi Badenoch front and centre to parrot the party line will not do. Surely even she must be embarrassed to be on the wrong side over this one. She cannot possibly believe her tripe that the outrage over the teenager confirms the UK does not have a race problem.
Frankly, who cares. Good on Child Q, her mother and her excellent legal team for going after everyone concerned with her treatment - the school AND the police.
She isn’t just doing it for herself. She’s taking them on for every child who has found themselves trapped in a similar situation, intimidated into believing her aggressors have the right to treat her that way.
She’s launching those civil proceedings for all of those boys and girls traumatised into silence by authority. For the parents so unaware of their rights or unable to afford representation that they can’t turn their frustration into justice.
The decision makers - the police who conducted the intimate search and the teachers who left them to it - have to remain anonymous so that Child Q cannot be identified. But that doesn’t mean we can’t hear their explanations for their actions.
The protests that have erupted at Child Q’s school are the tip of the iceberg. Some kids are understood to have gone on strike, refusing to attend lessons.
Rallies are planned across London this weekend. They've already started with the anger intensifying. The temperature is rising, not dying down.
