26 March 2023 , 11:17
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More than 2,800 children were strip searched by police in four years, figures show.
A report by the Children’s Commissioner for England, Dame Rachel de Souza, found that the youngest child strip searched between 2018 and mid-2022 was just EIGHT.
More than a third were black boys, while black children were six times more likely to be strip searched, the study found.
It follows the notorious Child Q case, which saw a 15-year-old black girl stripped by four female Met Police officers after she was wrongly accused of possessing cannabis.
Nearly a quarter of the 2,847 children subjected to such searches were aged between 10 and 15.
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Children’s Commissioner for England Dame Rachel de Souza revealed the findings in a reportThe report, which is to be released tomorrow, is expected to show more than half of strip searches took place without an appropriate adult confirmed to be present and a small number were conducted with at least one officer of a different gender from the child present.
Speaking ahead of its publication, Dame Rachel told the Sunday Times: “The police really need to get their act together on this. We’ve had a report on the Met but the data that I’m going to share tomorrow I think is almost more shocking.
“My hope was that Child Q was the only child that this would have ever happened to in a school. But the data I am about to release smashed that to smithereens.
“What we need now is a commitment from the top. It’s about police chiefs themselves, it’s about the Home Office that set the parameters and it’s about the training of staff because what I have been hearing about some of the practices that are being used is keeping me awake at night.
“The shocking thing about the strip-searching of children is that we didn’t know. But we have now spoken to a lot of case studies about the problem . . . I can’t tell you how many children have called us up and parents who have brought this up.
Hundreds of protesters last year attended a rally in support of Child Q who was strip searched by police (In Pictures via Getty Images)“There is this one case where a boy was strip-searched four times and four times his mother picked him up from the police station but nobody told her, including him, that he had been strip-searched.”
In a heartbreaking statement Child Q, who has not been identified, said last year: "Someone walked into the school, where I was supposed to feel safe, took me away from the people who were supposed to protect me and stripped me naked, while on my period."
Describing the impact the search by Met Police officers had on her, she said she "can’t go a single day without wanting to scream, shout, cry or just give up".
She added: "All the people that allowed this to happen need to be held responsible. I was held responsible for a smell."
A Home Office spokesperson said: “Strip search is one of the most intrusive powers available to the police. No one should be subject to strip search on the basis of race or ethnicity and safeguards exist to prevent this.
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“Any child subject to a strip search should be accompanied by an appropriate adult unless there is an urgent risk of serious harm, or where the child specifically requests otherwise and the appropriate adult agrees. Such searches must be carried out by an officer of the same sex as the child.
“We take the concerns raised about children’s safeguarding extremely seriously. The Independent Office for Police Conduct is currently investigating several high profile incidents of strip search of children and it is vital that we await their findings.”
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