Thousands of children aged as young as eight have been strip-searched by police, shocking report finds in the wake of ‘Child Q’ scandal
- Children’s Commissioner ordered a report after the ‘Child Q’ scandal emerged
Children as young as eight are being strip-searched by police, the children’s commissioner has warned.
A shock report has found 3,000 youths were targeted in England and Wales over the last four years.
Some 24 per cent were between 10 and 15, and a few were below that age – with the youngest just eight years old. Black children were six times more likely to be targeted than the broader population, and in one instance a child was strip searched four times without informing their parents.
The Children’s Commissioner for England, Rachel de Souza, ordered the study after the ‘Child Q’ scandal came to light last March.
In that case a 15-year-old black schoolgirl was strip-searched by police while on her period after being wrongly suspected of carrying cannabis at school.
Scotland Yard apologised and said the strip-search at the girl’s school in 2020 without another adult present ‘should never have happened’.
The Children’s Commissioner for England, Rachel de Souza, ordered the study after the ‘Child Q’ scandal came to light last March
There were protests last March (pictured) after it emerged a 15-year-old black schoolgirl was strip-searched by police while on her period after being wrongly suspected of carrying cannabis at school
After those revelations Dame Rachel requested figures for strip-searches by the Metropolitan Police force which showed in August that more than 600 children underwent ‘intrusive and traumatising’ searches over a two-year period.
The latest findings across England and Wales will heap pressure on police – and Scotland Yard in particular following Louise Casey’s investigation that concluded the force is ‘institutionally racist’.
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 sets 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.
‘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.’
The latest findings across England and Wales will heap pressure on police – and Scotland Yard in particular following Louise Casey’s investigation that concluded the force is ‘institutionally racist’ (stock photograph)
