"DfE told to overhaul guidance after strip search of schoolgirl"

[LazyYogi]

"DfE told to overhaul guidance after strip search of schoolgirl" schoolsweek.co.uk/dfe-must-urgently-overhaul-guidance-after-disturbing-strip-search-of-black-schoolgirl/

This is horrible. The school say they put their trust in the law but now realise that was a mistake! The Met police seem to be at the root of more and more negative stories.

AIBU to think that the public and thus teachers should be able to trust the police to also be following safeguarding practices and consider children as people first rather than criminals? I appreciate this article is saying that the law and guidance was followed but that it is outdated. Doesn't seem like anyone considered the poor girl as a person nor had any compassion.

The fact the girl was black is a whole other level of issue...

It's a shocking disgrace. The poor girl.

They added: “This is the hardest thing that we’ve had to go through and for anyone to think
that the school might be complicit is very stressful and difficult to deal with.”

Tough shit. It was far more difficult, stressful and traumatic for the poor girl. My sympathy is entirely with her.

I agree with @billy1966 too.

What a disgraceful shit show. Shame on all of them who let her down so badly.

They added: “This is the hardest thing that we’ve had to go through and for anyone to think
that the school might be complicit is very stressful and difficult to deal with.”

The school instigated it, allowed it and stood by while it happened. Their decision making directly led to her being subjected to an incredibly traumatic experience on their watch. They aren’t complicit, they’re directly responsible for what happened to this child and yes, I’d at least expect school staff involved to lose their jobs and for the teaching staff to lose their registration.

I think what some people won't fully get perhaps are the full consequences of this on that child and her family.

All their lives changed utterly that day.

There will be the child she was pre the assault, and post the assault.

How she and her family view the world will have changed completely.

Decent parents know how much effort it takes to raise a child to be happy, well adjusted and doing well at school.

They spent 15 years getting her to that point, and two teachers, a nurse and some police officers tore that down in the most humiliating manner possible.

I am a mature woman who has seen the world, had regular contact with hospital via pregnancy, miscarriages, births, and have had my regular smears over the past 30 years.

They have always been dealt with in a sensitive respectful manner, yet I know countless women who actively dislike having smears, despite them also being conducted in a respectful manner.

Can you imagine being strip searched like that?
Being violated like that?

At 15?
In the middle of the school day, mid exam?
To be told to bend over and cough?
To be internally checked?

I have no doubt this would be traumatic for an adult woman who had had children.

But for a 15 year old at the early years of puberty?
Utterly traumatising.

I am not surprised to read she is utterly changed.
She is self harming because of PTS most likely and is a shadow of her former self.

Not only was her person wholly violated, it was done in school at the behest of her teachers.

There is no way possible that the reaction of decent people to this vile action, could be in any way disproportionate, excessive, or hyperbolic.

I knew the Met was guilty of corruption but participating in unlawful, sexual assault of minors in a school setting with participating teachers, is a low they will never recover from, in my eyes.

@PhileasPhilby

I think it’s very unfair school are getting the blame when it was the police who took the action.

Well for a start, there was a distinct lack of any safeguarding whatsoever with regards to this child. So yes the school absolutely is to blame, along with the Police.

@AnneLovesGilbert
@Jellycatspyjamas

Agree with you both.

This is NOT complicity.

This is 100% instigation.

I too believe their registrations should be removed.

Parents have a right to know what the character are of the teachers/nurse being employed by the school.

I wouldn't want my children in a school where the staff are comfortable with an ethos that facilities the sexual assault of a child in their care.

What led the teachers to believe this course of action was the one to follow is a very important question to be answered?.

Was it actually school policy or did they simply make a unilateral decision to disregard normal safe guarding practices in the case of THIS child?

I can't understand the thought process that would have brought the teachers/nurse to a place that had them guarding a door while two cops sexually assaulted a 15 year old child in THEIR care.

I have never touched drugs, and am vociferously anti drug, and I simply can't understand why after the exam a call to her parents wasn't the first obvious, logical port of call.

NONE of this makes sense.

Was it actually school policy or did they simply make a unilateral decision to disregard normal safe guarding practices in the case of THIS child?

Apparently there was a similar previous incident (possibly with this child, I’d need to read the SCR report again), where they did phone the parents, which was their usual process for dealing with it. So there was a different way they could have dealt with it and they chose not to.

I agree completely with everything billy is saying

The school had a duty of care and failed utterly and quite obviously the police are, without question, in the wrong

@billy1966’s words explain eloquently how dreadful this was - and how the school are equally guilty as the police, in what happened.

It was unarguably an assault, and I am convinced it felt sexual to the poor girl involved, so all concerned should be prosecuted for sexual assault or for being accessories to that assault.

Heads need to roll.

@Jellycatspyjamas

I appreciate this article is saying that the law and guidance was followed but that it is outdated. Doesn't seem like anyone considered the poor girl as a person nor had any compassion.

The guidance for the first, superficial, search by the school was followed, the guidance for the further search by the police wasn’t followed in a number of areas. The school also didn’t follow their usual process of contacting parents before contacting the police, allowed the child to be removed to a medical room and strip searched. Claiming they didn’t know the police would strip search her is no defence, they should have known, by asking clearly what the police process was. The school were responsible for then returning her to her exam, sending her home in a taxi and still not informing her parents. The school were also responsible for not having anyone act as an appropriate adult for the child and not checking her well-being after the fact.

The police and school are equally responsible for letting this child down.

This. I also don't believe the school saying they didn't know the police were going to strip search the girl. They had already searched all her outerclothes and bags themselves so what more did they think the police would achieve if they weren't going to search her more intimately? The school also specifically asked for a female officer when they called 101.

Even if they didn't think they would strip search her, why did they let her go into a room with police on her own? You can bet anything they would insist on being present if their own children were being "spoken to" in a room with 2 police officers! Didn't their student deserve the same protection?

It all seems a complete over exaggeration for just a "smell" of cannabis. Apart from anything else cannabis smells (or smells much more) once it has been smoked not when it is in resin or unsmoked joint form so of she smelled that strongly of it surely the likelihood was she would have already smoked whatever evidence they were hoping to find! Of course she could have smelled of it because her parents smoked or just because she stood on the tube next to someone else who had and could be perfectly innocent.

I think the school and the police absolutely failed her in the worst way possible.

I think some of the language in the report minimises what they did to the girl - in her eyes, in her experience, it will have been exactly the same as rape, but made even worse by not being able to report it to the police and get the perpetrators locked up.

They've basically ruined her life.

She won't have got the grades she should have got in these exams or any future exams. Oh, sure, you can explain away with extenuating circumstances - but she would then need to relive this crime each time explaining that.

She was under the age of consent - how is she going to trust anyone enough to engage in healthy consensual sex as an adult?

So they've done huge damage from an emotional point of view, in terms of healthy, lasting relationships, her career, therefore her financial prospects... and her family are understandably gutted. There really isn't an aspect of her life they haven't wrecked.

For the record, I don't minimise weed, I'm very anti drugs, but even I can't see how a child smelling of drugs without acting under the influence warranted a strip search. Given previous concerns, it warranted further action, yes, but not this. They should have isolated her in the exam so the smell didn't distract the other children, and called her parents to come in immediately after the exam and talk about next steps.

I'm finding it really hard to keep the faith when it comes to the police.

This poor child was let down by all the adults actually employed to keep her safe. The school staff fucked up massively. They put that girl in a room to be strip searched and humiliated by police officers from Stoke Newington.

That name will be familiar to some because it was the police station that had to apologise to Dr. K Duff for gross misconduct regarding their strip search of her.

And I'm not being funny or anything but I watched a documentary about People Trafficking and the cop on it said they didn't have enough staff. Surely they'd have a whole lot more if they stopped sexually humiliating and assaulting law abiding school girls and students whilst on shift.

Can anyone in a school confirm that this is standard practice?

In my naïveté I assumed that they would search bag and pockets then call parents. Never in my mind did I expect strip searching.

What is the police preoccupation with women being smelly? Wtaf is wrong with them?

I find it hard to believe that no other pupil smelt of weed or cigarettes on that day. Were they assaulted and humiliated too?

@billy1966

I think it is absolutely just the school are getting the blame.

They removed a child from an exam because of a smell.

Those teachers and nurse are an absolute disgrace and there is no excuse whatsoever that absolves them of the decision to interrupt her exam on a suspicion that would easily have waited until AFTER her exam had been taken.

It's also the school who made the decision not to contact her guardians.

The school and it's teachers/nurse are devoid of any moral decency if the policy is to remove a child from an exam for such a spurious reason.

If I was a teacher at that school I would be appalled and mortified to be associated with a school that would facilitate the sexual assault of a student, having removed her from an important exam on the pretext of a whiff of something.

The school deserves ever bit of approbation coming it's way.

💯 Just trying to deflect

The problem is that schools have been repeatedly given the message from ofsted and the government that they need to be “tough”, have “zero tolerance” etc. Many schools have policies that wouldn’t be out of place in a prison.

Then we wonder why school staff didn’t know they were supposed to safeguard children in the face of abuse of power. Of course they didn’t because abuse of power is essentially the culture in which schools swim in.

Not of the above makes this incident remotely excusable. It just highlights how much else is also horribly wrong in secondary schools in my view.

Can anyone in a school confirm that this is standard practice?

The report of the independent review confirms it isn’t standard practice.

@beinggreen

I think the school and the police absolutely failed her in the worst way possible.

I think some of the language in the report minimises what they did to the girl - in her eyes, in her experience, it will have been exactly the same as rape, but made even worse by not being able to report it to the police and get the perpetrators locked up.

They've basically ruined her life.

She won't have got the grades she should have got in these exams or any future exams. Oh, sure, you can explain away with extenuating circumstances - but she would then need to relive this crime each time explaining that.

She was under the age of consent - how is she going to trust anyone enough to engage in healthy consensual sex as an adult?

So they've done huge damage from an emotional point of view, in terms of healthy, lasting relationships, her career, therefore her financial prospects... and her family are understandably gutted. There really isn't an aspect of her life they haven't wrecked.

For the record, I don't minimise weed, I'm very anti drugs, but even I can't see how a child smelling of drugs without acting under the influence warranted a strip search. Given previous concerns, it warranted further action, yes, but not this. They should have isolated her in the exam so the smell didn't distract the other children, and called her parents to come in immediately after the exam and talk about next steps.

I'm finding it really hard to keep the faith when it comes to the police.

I agree with all you’ve said too.

"Even if they didn't think they would strip search her, why did they let her go into a room with police on her own? You can bet anything they would insist on being present if their own children were being "spoken to" in a room with 2 police officers! Didn't their student deserve the same protection?"

Agree @thevassal

@beinggreen....completely agree.

I think they were deliberately cowardly standing outside where she was being held.

They could have absolutely insisted on being inside the room, but they knew bloody well what was going to happen and wanted to give themselves "plausible deniability" to what was going to occur.

Utterly dishonorable.

They have brought the whole of the teaching profession in that school into disrepute.

@AnyFucker

The guidance doesn’t need “overhauling” it is already in place.

For some reason, every person involved in this sorry episode chose to ignore it. Anyone at any point could have stood up and objected to what this girl was subjected to. All these people will have had extensive safeguarding training that first and foremost instills that protecting children is everyone’s responsibility

No excuses. Not forgetting either that these professionals mandatory training will also have included equality and diversity recognition. So wrong on many levels and every single person that stood by is culpable.

This x100 Just horrific way to behave, poor kid.

Yes, I didn't mean to alleviate blame on the school here. I absolutely think the school caused the situation and failed completely in their safeguarding duties. But I'm shocked that the police cannot be trusted to safeguard either. Or rather I would be shocked a few years ago. The more I read about police interaction with the public (Met and others) the less this kind of thing can surprise me.

My sons are pre-school age but we are one of the many families that feel we cannot trust them to a school due to our own experiences and those we've read about....

This shouldn’t have been a calling the police matter in the first place. Particularly as she was in an exam. There was no threat to life or emergency situation here.
And the school should have called the parents

The definition of sexual abuse generally involves the motive of sexual gratification on the part of the perpetrators, which wasn’t the case here. It was intimate in nature but not sexually motivated so I don’t think it can be labelled sexual assault/abuse. It’s awful enough in it’s own right

Completely disagree. Sexual assault is about violation. It is about control and humiliation. Rapists aren't desperate for an orgasm or a thrill, they are committing acts of hate and violence.

This poor child was violated, so I would definitely regard her experience as sexual assault.