A Black schoolgirl in Hackney was strip-searched by Metropolitan Police officers after being accused of smelling like cannabis, a Local Child Safeguarding Practice Review has found.
The 15-year-old secondary school child was taken out of an exam and escorted to a room where her intimate body parts were searched, and was then asked to remove her sanitary towel. The “traumatic” incident, which happened in 2020, occurred without another adult present and with the knowledge that she was on her period, the review has revealed.
According to the review, carried out by City & Hackney Safeguarding Children Partnership (CHSCP), the search was unjustified and racism was “likely to have been an influencing factor in the decision”. The review said the decision to strip search Child Q is likely connected to her ethnicity and her background growing up on a Hackney estate.
Teachers were found to have had an “insufficient focus” on the safeguarding needs of the unnamed girl – referred to as child Q – because they didn’t challenge the police’s authority or get consent from her mother.
In a statement, child Q said: “Someone walked into the school, where I was supposed to feel safe…and stripped me naked, while on my period.
“I can’t go a single day without wanting to scream, shout, cry or just give up….I just want to go back to feeling safe again.”
In a letter to the review, Child Q’s family said she is “not the same person” since the incident, and described how she has changed from a “happy go lucky girl to a timid recluse that hardly speaks.”
The report said school staff initially raised concerns because they claimed that Child Q smelled of cannabis. After a search of her possessions, they found nothing, and staff then contacted the police.
“[She] was racially profiled due to her being black and her extreme large head of locks,” her aunt claimed in a letter to the review.
The review stated that Child Q’s experience was likely the result of ‘adultification bias’, a concept where Black children are perceived to be older, less innocent and more ‘streetwise’ because of their race.
In a letter to the review, Child Q’s mother said: “Why doesn’t my daughter deserve the same rights as every other child, is this because…she is a black child living in a poor city area?”
Cllr Anntoinette Bramble, Deputy Mayor and Cabinet Member for Children’s Services, and the Mayor of Hackney, Philip Glanville said in a statement on Hackney Council website:
“Child Q was subjected to humiliating, traumatising and utterly shocking treatment by police officers – actions that were wholly disproportionate to the alleged incident to which they had been called.
“The report concluded that racism was likely an ‘influencing factor’ in the strip search…it is up to all of us to challenge racism where this is seen, heard or felt – and it is incumbent on the Council to challenge partners and be a driving force of meaningful, systemic change….We welcome all the recommendations made in the review.”
In an article written for The Guardian, MP for Hackney North and Stoke Newington, Diane Abbott said: “Black schoolgirls are not safe from police abuse, even at school, supposedly a place of safety. What kind of society tolerates this?”
