Warning: This story contains graphic descriptions.
A Black child in the U.K. who was wrongfully strip searched in the middle of class while on her period spoke out on Wednesday, saying in a statement that she didn’t know if she’d “feel normal again.”
In a case that has enraged Britons, the 15-year-old girl, known only as “Child Q,” was accused by teachers in the middle of an exam of smelling like pot. She denied carrying or having used any drugs, and the strip search found nothing.
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In a report released earlier this week, City of London & Hackney Safeguarding Children Partnership (CHSCP)—a child welfare agency—found that the school-conducted strip search was racially influenced.
Child Q’s family released a statement through their lawyers on Wednesday, slamming the school officials and police officers who administered the probe, and saying authorities “adultified” the teen, seeing her more as a threat than an innocent child.
“This was not treated as a safeguarding issue but a criminal matter,” the girl’s mother said in the statement. “Professionals treated her as an adult. She was searched as an adult. Is it because of her skin? Her hair? Why her?”
“This truly shocking case is indicative of the adultification of Black children routinely taken by authorities,” family attorney Chanel Dolcy said. “It is unlikely that [the child] would have been treated in this humiliating and degrading way had she not been Black.”
After being interrupted and pulled from her test in 2020, a school “search of [the girl’s] bag, blazer, scarf, and shoes revealed nothing of significance,” according to the CHSCP report.
But staff at the school did not let the issue go. Apparently confused as to how to handle the situation, they contacted the Metropolitan Police for advice. The girl was taken to a medical room with four officers—two male and two female—and strip searched even though officers knew that she was menstruating, the report said. The girl was allegedly made to remove her menstrual pad, bend over, spread her buttocks, and cough. The girl’s family was not alerted before the search was conducted, and no teacher was present for its duration.
“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,” Child Q said in her Wednesday statement.
“Do you think it is appropriate for a Black girl to be searched without a parent or family member?” the girl’s mother told CHSCP investigators in an interview provided outlined in the report. “Would [you] allow your child to be strip searched and questioned without consent or a guardian present, for a 15-year-old to be interrogated by multiple unnamed police officers?”
None of the officers doing the search had their body cameras recording, the report found.
Child Q was so disturbed when she got home that her mom took her to see the family doctor. The doctor suggested psychological care, which led to the teen speaking with CHSCP.
“Child Q had been exposed to a traumatic incident and had undoubtedly suffered harm. …The repercussions on Child Q’s emotional health were obvious and ongoing. Given the context of where and how the search took place, it was impossible not to view these circumstances as anything other than the most serious and significant,” the report said.
“The incident also illustrated…disproportionality and racism,” the report continued, “and how these factors might have influenced the actions of organizations and individual professionals.”
Famous Brits joined a chorus of condemnation for the Metropolitan Police and Child Q’s school after the CHCPS report went viral.
“What happened to Child Q wasn’t done at the hands of an establishment that can be reformed,” actress Kelechi wrote on Twitter. “It was done by an establishment that needs to be abolished. What part of the festering system are you really trying to keep??”
“The way Child Q was treated is also part of the adultification of Black girls. Their childhoods yanked away by a society that refuses us tenderness,” Kelechi said in another tweet.
Writer Nadifa Mohamed posted, “The casual destruction of a black girl's life by her school and the Met police. From top of the class to withdrawn and self-harming because the adults in her world chose to harm her rather than protect. #CHILDQ.”
“The indignities that Child Q was subjected to are not an aberration, they're part of a bigger picture of institutional racism and discrimination within policing,” Member of Parliament Diane Abbott wrote. “I’m appalled this happened.”
The Metropolitan Police issued an apology this week, saying the strip search “should never have happened," according to the BBC.
However, the damage was done.
“She is now self-harming and requires therapy,” Child Q’s maternal aunt told CHSCP, according to the report. “She is traumatized and is now a shell of the bubbly child she was before this incident.”
Before the incident, the girl’s aunt said that she was doing well in school, but she then became a target for teachers.
“She appeared to be singled out by the teachers repeatedly for various things,” she said. “The family do not believe that the officers would have treated a Caucasian girl child who was on her monthly periods in the same way.”
CHCPS determined that the school had a right to question whether or not Child Q possessed any drugs, but its way of going about it was unjustified. The decision to strip search Child Q did not adhere to the U.N.’s Convention on the Rights of the Child, the report concluded, and “law and policy” should not have been prioritized if it meant endangering a child.
“I don’t know if I’m going to feel normal again. I don’t know how long it will take,” Child Q said in her statement. “...But I do know this can't happen to anyone, ever again.”
