Posted on 04/02/2008 3:39:20 PM PDT by neverdem
There are two kinds of people in the world: the kind who think it's perfectly reasonable to strip-search a 13-year-old girl suspected of bringing ibuprofen to school, and the kind who think those people should be kept as far away from children as possible. The first group includes officials at Safford Middle School in Safford, Arizona, who in 2003 forced eighth-grader Savana Redding to prove she was not concealing Advil in her crotch or cleavage.
It also includes two judges on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit, who last fall ruled that the strip search did not violate Savana's Fourth Amendment rights. The full court, which recently heard oral arguments in the case, now has an opportunity to overturn that decision and vote against a legal environment in which schoolchildren are conditioned to believe government agents have the authority to subject people to invasive, humiliating searches on the slightest pretext.
Safford Middle School has a "zero tolerance" policy that prohibits possession of all drugs, including not just alcohol and illegal intoxicants but prescription medications and over-the-counter remedies, "except those for which permission to use in school has been granted." In October 2003, acting on a tip, Vice Principal Kerry Wilson found a few 400-milligram ibuprofen pills (each equivalent to two over-the-counter tablets) and one nonprescription naproxen tablet in the pockets of a student named Marissa, who claimed Savana was her source.
Savana, an honors student with no history of disciplinary trouble or drug problems, said she didn't know anything about the pills and agreed to a search of her backpack, which turned up nothing incriminating. Wilson nevertheless instructed a female secretary to strip-search Savana under the school nurse's supervision, without even bothering to contact the girl's mother.
The secretary had Savana take off all her clothing except her underwear. Then she told her to "pull her bra out and to the side and shake it, exposing her breasts," and "pull her underwear out at the crotch and shake it, exposing her pelvic area." Sometimes it's hard to tell the difference between drug warriors and child molesters.
"I was embarrassed and scared," Savana said in an affidavit, "but felt I would be in more trouble if I did not do what they asked. I held my head down so they could not see I was about to cry." She called it "the most humiliating experience I have ever had." Later, she recalled, the principal, Robert Beeman, said "he did not think the strip search was a big deal because they did not find anything."
The U.S. Supreme Court has held that a public school official's search of a student is constitutional if it is "justified at its inception" and "reasonably related in scope to the circumstances which justified the interference in the first place." This search was neither.
When Wilson ordered the search, the only evidence that Savana had violated school policy was the uncorroborated accusation from Marissa, who was in trouble herself and eager to shift the blame. Even Marissa (who had pills in her pockets, not her underwear) did not claim that Savana currently possessed any pills, let alone that she had hidden them under her clothes.
Savana, who was closely supervised after Wilson approached her, did not have an opportunity to stash contraband. As the American Civil Liberties Union puts it, "There was no reason to suspect that a thirteen-year-old honor-roll student with a clean disciplinary record had adopted drug-smuggling practices associated with international narcotrafficking, or to suppose that other middle-school students would willingly consume ibuprofen that was stored in another student's crotch."
The invasiveness of the search also has to be weighed against the evil it was aimed at preventing. "Remember," the school district's lawyer recently told ABC News by way of justification, "this was prescription-strength ibuprofen." It's a good thing the school took swift action, before anyone got unauthorized relief from menstrual cramps.
© Copyright 2008 by Creators Syndicate Inc.
Thanks for the text & link.
Have kids, homeschool them. (shaking head)
Or mine.
Yet I'm sure they give referrals to Planned Barrenhood which gives out birth control pills to teens like candy.
wouldn’t a drug-sniffing dog
do a more respectable job?
the girl would not be undressed.
You would make a great camp guard, Ilsa.
Thanks for the ping!
I would have ended up in jail if somebody forced Sassy to remove her clothing. They easily could wait until a parent got to the school. I would be yanking my child out of that school & getting a very good lawyer asap.
I agree.
Ok... I just read another thread about an openly gay elementary school teacher given some type of award, then I read this.
What is going on in our public schools? This is absolutely INSANE! First teacher to strip search my child - especially “inspecting his/her crotch” - would meet disasterous consequences. All this over suspicion of Advil. I suppose if she was under suspicion for having condoms and birth control pills, she would have never been bothered.....
A 13yo might tend to be more easily intimidated, though not all 13yos are. As a shy, innocent 13yo, I would've gone along with whatever the school told me. But, as a not-so-innocent, argumentative 15yo, I didn't even let high school administrators search my purse.
The administrators would tell my tough-talking friends to empty their purses routinely, and they always complied. When the dean told me to empty my purse, I said, "Do you have a warrant?" Needless to say, the dean didn't even touch my purse.
I wonder what would happen to a kid who refused today like I did oh-so-many years ago. If this 13yo had refused the strip search, I doubt the school officials would've forced her into a strip search. They relied on the fact that she was a nice girl who would follow orders.
I still can’t get over the fact they didn’t wait for the mother to get to the school. I know I would have told the school to go to hell at 13 yrs old. I really don’t know what they would have done had she said no. I do know if someone stripped my child of her clothes I would be furious. I hope the mother sues the school. I don’t care for lawsuits too much but sometimes they are needed.
“I hope the mother sues the school. I don’t care for lawsuits too much but sometimes they are needed”
At the very least I would be in the Sheriffs/DAs office asking for charges to be filed. The I’d probably be in my State Representatives office. Thats all assuming I didn’t take a baseball bat to the principal.
Sexual battery under the color of authority.
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
What should parents do? Should they throw their children into the fires of Moloch hoping to put out the flames?
Sorry,,,but children should **not** be used as political foot soldiers sent out to fight an adult's battle in the atheistic, Secular Humanist government indoctrination camps. Neither should children be used a missionaries to bring a little “salt and light” to the government schools.
Finally, the best way to fight the government schools is to work to shut them down. Removing children is one of the most effective ways to do that.
do a more respectable job?
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Why? So that we can train children to submit to government brown shirt with K-9’s on a leash?
Sorry,,,But, it sounds utterly Orwellian.
Quite so. Anoreth would have left the nurse in piece on the floor, even at 13. (Tough girl ... Marines material :-). On the other hand, the younger girls would probably cave, which would leave me having to chew the person to bits (very unsanitary) and cause lots of legal trouble, too.
What a dreadful story, and hardly the first one of this sort. Remember the Pennsylvania situation where they did vaginal exams on girls trying out for a sports team?
We still HAVE a Fourth Amendment?
Yes. Why is it the educators are protected from the consequences f behavior that would land another person in jail, probably for life and have then branded as a sex offender definitely for life?
Child abuse is child abuse, no matter who does it. It makes no difference to the child who is being abused. The fact of the abuse happened, the damage is done.
My youngest daughter would have reacted the same way. My older is more likely to comply. Just their natures. It’s been much more difficult to teach the older one to stand up for herself.
As people have been observing on other threads recently, it's the government's system, and they make the rules. Among the government's rules is that their people are excused from consequences of their actions. Look at Congress: they almost always excuse themselves from the laws they impose on others.
What other racket permits an institution to, first, fail to accomplish its purpose, and also violate civil and criminal law, and get away with it year after year ... with more and more funding? It really boggles the mind.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.