Posted on 04/27/2009 9:25:52 AM PDT by SmithL
When she was a 13-year-old student at Safford Middle School in Arizona, Savana Redding was strip-searched by school officials in search of - this is no joke - ibuprofen. Now she is suing the district and the officials for violating her Fourth Amendment protection against unreasonable searches and seizures.
It is not good for Redding that while the U.S. Supreme Court heard arguments on her case last week, Justice David Souter commented, "My thought process is I would rather have the kid embarrassed by a strip search, if we can't find anything short of that, than to have some other kids dead because the stuff is distributed at lunchtime and things go awry."
The good news, I guess, is that Souter is not the surgeon general, because he seems unable to distinguish between Advil and methamphetamine.
But that's it for the good news.
Redding was an honor student with no disciplinary marks against her when another student was caught in class with prescription ibuprofen, small knives and a cigarette. That girl falsely told Assistant Principal Kerry Wilson that she got the pills from Redding.
Redding denied the charge. Wilson searched her backpack and found nothing. So he asked a female assistant and school nurse to strip-search Redding. The two women took Redding down the hall and instructed her to remove her socks, shoes and jacket, then shirt and pants, and finally, when she was down to her underwear, they asked her to pull and twist her underwear - exposing herself - to see if any pills fell out. Redding later described the episode as "the most humiliating experience" of her life.
The experience should have been among the most humiliating for Wilson, the assistant and the nurse: They didn't find any pills.
(Excerpt) Read more at sfgate.com ...
If she’d wanted an abortion or the “day after” pill, the school would probably be ok with that.
I would charge them with a sex crime and ruin there lives If it was a lesbian they would have
But we dare not test persons entering the country for Mexican flu because that might invade their privacy.
The War on Drugs is destroying our liberty.
Don’t sue the “district.” Sue the people!
Where else, would such a strip-search take place, if not in an educational system?
Try that stunt at any commercial company, and you’ll be fired within hours. The TSA cannot do this, where else but in our Unionized educational system can a stunt like this be allowed to happen?
The truly shameful part, is these two imbeciles are still on the payrole.
Fight or flight........it is what it is coming down too folks!
If they had good cause (2 or more witnesses) to suspect the girl had something truly dangerous that would warrant a strip search, I would be OK with that as an unfortunate necessity. But for ibuprofen???? The schools are nuthouses, and I'm not referring to the students. I'd need ibuprofen to put up with the adults if I was a kid in a situation like that...
I wonder what would have happened to the little girl had she run screaming from that office and out of the door to the school. I’m afraid that is what I would have at least tried to do—but then I’ve always been a rebel—LOL!
Parents need to teach their children when to refuse to follow orders and demand their parents be notified.
Stunning. Common sense, respect, decency... it’s all out the window.
Hope the cost of this irresponsibilty is paid not just by the civil suit, but criminally as well.
We need a truth commission to get to the bottom of this and prosecute anyone involved in drafting the guidelines that allowed this to happen.
The kid who lied about the girl having the medicine should’ve been punished.
This has zero to do with the WOD’s - this is just your way of decompensating.
All I can say is that if that were my child, I’d probably be typing this from my jail cell.
What a disgusting abuse of authority. At most , the child should’ve been detained in a supervised room until the parents could be contacted/located. They shouldn’t have touched that child period with out the parents consent.
I can only imagine the trauma the kid went through. I remember at that age I had an extreme anxiety over gym class because we had to change clothes in a locker room full of other girls. I was raised very conservative and at the time I was mortified to have to take my clothes off in front of my friends. I couldn’t imagine having to do that in front of my teachers.
What happened to the other kid is a separate issue. The teachers/administrators who decided they needed to do stripsearchers on young children should probably be jailed.
Ward Churchill got it wrong, the “little Eichmanns” are running America’s schools.
Which is exactly what I did, when I shared this story with my kids and explained their rights to them (again) and that they should always refuse to co-operate or answer questions and simply repeat that they want their parents notified and present.
Oh man .. I’ve got a 12 year old who had a GYN health issue earlier this year .. I was WITH her the whole time and it was sooo humiliating and embarrassing for her. I can’t even imagine in the office with school staff .. ugh.
If this were my child .. OMG ..
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