Stick your apologies - police, teachers and staff members involved in the strip-searching of kids like Child Q should be left with nowhere to hide

Frankly, if I had a child at the school where Child Q was disgracefully strip-searched while on her period, I’d remove them.

Especially now that the case against the officers who conducted the search has been proven.

You and I both know that, had she been a middle class girl from Kensington, Berkshire or any of the well-to-do leafy suburbs, all hell would have broken loose.

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But we’ll get to that.

The whole thing is a damning indictment on the East London school, its staff and their handling of the young girls in their care.

We now know that two officers from London’s Metropolitan Police have been found guilty of gross misconduct for strip-searching the 15 year old who would come to be known as Child Q.

She’d been wrongly accused, in December 2020, of possessing cannabis. She’d told them they’d made a mistake. She told them she was menstruating. They carried on regardless.

The case was proven against trainee Det Con Kristina Linge and PC Rafal Szmydynski, while PC Victoria Wray's actions were deemed by a panel to be misconduct. All three are waiting to find out what penalty they will face.

It is hard to overstate just how gross an invasion of the young girl’s privacy their actions were. Absolutely reprehensible.

It is equally as hard to move away from the school’s total and utter dereliction of duty.

As a father of two girls of a similar age, the details of this distressing incident leave you incandescent. Be warned.

Child Q was still forced to expose her intimate parts and her sanitary pad as she was violated - with no appropriate adult present.

Legal proceedings on behalf of the teenager were launched against the school and the Met when the whole thing was uncovered three years ago. Too right.

Heads should roll on the school’s board as well. Not a single person involved in the decision making and rancid culture which led to that incident should remain.

What does it say about the school’s complacency that any staff member there could leave a child at the mercy of police in that way?

Why was the school so quick to call the police in the first place?

Why did the school not tell Child Q’s mother about the search?

Why were there no staff members present as Child Q was browbeaten into complying?

Child Q’s mother later revealed in statements provided for the review that her daughter was asked to go back into an exam without any teacher checking on her welfare, knowing what she had just gone through. Why?

A statement by the Hackney school’s governing board said in 2022 that “while the school was not aware that a strip search was taking place, we wholly accept that the child should not have been left in the situation that she was”.

The board added that because of this, the school had “offered a full and formal apology to Child Q and her family, and continue to work with them to provide what support we can”.

The statement also said “changes were made immediately after the incident and continued to be made”, adding that the makeup and leadership of the governing board had changed and that the way that the school was engaging with the police “has completely evolved”.

During this month’s hearing, the search was described as unjustified, inappropriate, disproportionate, humiliating and degrading. Yet even those terms barely scratch the surface.

Child Q was told to remove her clothing and bend over, the panel heard. When the scandal came to light through a safeguarding review by Hackney Council in 2022, it was revealed she’d been made to spread her legs and use her hands to spread her buttocks while coughing.

It happened without authorisation, without an appropriate adult and with zero concern for her age, sex or the need to treat her as a minor.

Any school where teachers can surrender kids so alarmingly must be given a wide berth.

Any teacher or staff member willing to give the green light to such an action should be publicly named and shamed.

What parent would want that individual operating in a decision-making capacity at their school? I wouldn’t. Would you?

In this case they can count themselves lucky that Child Q’s family don’t want anything in the public domain that could in turn lead to her being identified.

Still, though, stuff the apologies from the Met, the school and the council - all of whose energies would be better served holding the officers, staff and the teachers to account.

Would you believe the Met had the brass neck to try and cling, in their statement, to this line: “The hearing did not find that the officers were influenced by Child Q’s race, nor was she subject to adultification”?

They must be the only ones who didn’t. Few people outside that echo chamber agree. The phrase you are thinking of begins with institutional.

The verdict ran counter to the conclusion reached by the official investigation in 2022 which found racism was likely to have been an “influencing factor” in the officers’ actions.

At a community meeting in Hackney when the whole thing erupted, a police officer admitted that the Met had a problem with officers viewing inner London children as “adults”.

What had happened to Child Q, he added, would probably not have happened to a child living in the Cotswolds, as an example.

At least Hackney Council had the self-awareness this week to double down on their initial findings.

“We have always been of the opinion that this incident was a result of racism or unconscious bias and adultification,” their statement read on Thursday, “with a young girl subjected to completely unacceptable treatment because of her race.

“Despite the police disciplinary panel finding it not proven that the officers involved were motivated by racial or unconscious bias, we welcome the finding that the search was unnecessary, inappropriate and disproportionate.

“It also raises serious questions around anti-racist training, processes and accountability within the police, and the need to strengthen national legislation on strip searching.”

Following her ordeal, Child Q was in therapy and had been self-harming.

This is one case where sorry just won’t cut it. It won’t go anywhere near the accountability needed. Nor will it address the cases, years before, and across the country since that shame so many of the UK’s police forces.

The statistics prove it is part of a broader pattern of police abuse towards women - particularly Black women and girls.

Children should not be strip searched - unless it is an extreme, last resort under strictly controlled conditions.

In cases where they've been treated like Child Q, keep your apologies. Those at fault should be left with nowhere to hide.

Ends