TREC's Statement On The Child Q Case

The Race Equality Centre (TREC) wish to express its concern and disgust over the illicit strip search of then 15-year-old Child Q, without the benefit of the presence of and appropriate adult and in breach of established legal protocols for strip searching of young adults. The unwarranted strip search, conducted whilst the child was menstruating, took place after she was taken out of an exam she was about to sit, by her school authorities after an unwarranted suspicion that she was in possession of cannabis.[i] The search had the impact of traumatizing Child Q, as is evident from the following comments made in the wake of this intrusive search of her body:

“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.…On the top of preparing for the most important exams of my life. I can't go a single day without wanting to scream, shout, cry or just give up....I feel like I'm locked in a box, and no one can see or cares that I just want to go back to feeling safe again, my box is collapsing around me, and no-one wants to help....I don’t know if I’m going to feel normal again. I don’t know how long it will take to repair my box. But I do know this can't happen to anyone, ever again....All the people that allowed this to happen need to be held responsible. I was held responsible for a smell”.…But I’m just a child. The main thing I need is space and time to understand what has happened to me and exactly how I feel about it and getting past this exam season.…… I need to know that the people who have done this to me can't do it to anyone else ever again. In fact so NO ONE else can do this to any other child in their care...things need to change with all organizations involved. Even I can see that.” [ii]

The mother and maternal aunt were greatly concerned about this horrible incident, with her mother indicating that:

“At the end of day, things like that happen, is it because of her skin, hair. Why her, now looking at the future, will she be comfortable?...Child Q was searched by the police and was asked to go back into the exam without any teacher asking her about how she felt knowing what she had just gone through. Their position in the school is being part of the safeguarding team, but they were not acting as if they were a part of that team. This makes me sick - the fact that my child had to take her sanitary towel off and put the same dirty towel back on because they would not allow her to use the restroom to clean herself”.[iii]

A Local Child Safeguarding Practice Review conducted by Jim Gamble QPM, Independent Child Safeguarding Commissioner, on behalf of the City of London and Hackney Safeguarding Children Partnership (CHSCP) concluded that the decision to strip search Child Q was insufficiently attuned to her best interests or right to privacy. School staff had an insufficient focus on the safeguarding needs of Child Q when responding to concerns about suspected drug use.  Having considered the context of the incident, the views of those engaged in the review and the impact felt by Child Q and her family, racism (whether deliberate or not) was likely to have been an influencing factor in the decision to undertake a strip search.[iv]

Children in custody are “vulnerable” and “special care is required”.[v] As such, the police failed in their duty of care to children and young people to protect their “interests and wellbeing”, as mandated in the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child and as set out in the case of R (HC) v Secretary of State for the Home Department.[vi] They also broke their own rules on strip-searches and have apologised, with Scotland Yard saying "it should not have happened".[vii]

This apology comes just two months after the Met Police publicly apologised for the verbal abuse of an academic, Dr Konstancja Duff, during a strip search almost a decade ago which she claims left her with multiple injuries and post-traumatic stress disorder. The force admitted that officers used “sexist, derogatory and unacceptable language” following her arrest for obstruction in May 2013. Duff said she had “intrusive thoughts about the strip search [which] often brought on panic attacks” for months afterwards.[viii] Lawyers for Child Q indicated that it was their intention to hold both the police and the school to account, including through “cast iron commitments” to ensure this never happens again to “any other child".[ix]

MP, Claudia Webb referred to the incident as an “abhorrent” incident of “misogynist and racist child abuse”.[x] . case of Child Q exposes the degrading treatment of black girls and the mindset of those who look the other way, we should not assume this is a one-off; structural biases plague our educational system.[xi] The Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan has called for the severity of the investigation to be upgraded to “gross misconduct”, which would constitute a  breach of the Standards of Professional Behaviour “so severe” that dismissal would be justified, “potentially without notice”. In an open letter, Sadiq Khan has urged the IOPC to “consider the conclusion” of the safeguarding report which concluded that racism had a role to play in the officers’ decision to conduct a strip search. Mr Khan said that:

“As mayor I have been clear that London’s police service must have the trust and confidence of the public they serve and incidents such as those experienced by Child Q not only foster distrust in the Met but actively hamper any efforts to police by consent. Londoners rightly expect their police service to act with the utmost integrity at all times. In instances when standards are not met, Londoners need to trust that those charged with investigating allegations involving the police leave no stone unturned. This case has understandably caused widespread concern among the public and it is important that all allegations are fully investigated, and that all relevant sources of information are taken into account”.[xii]

10,000 searches have been conducted by the Met on children in the last 5 years including 2,360 on under 16s. “Disproportionate numbers” of Black children are strip-searched by the police force.  In 2020/21, of the 25 children subject to ‘further searches’ in Hackney by police officers from the “Central East Borough Command Unit”, 15 were Black. Nearly every search (22) resulted in “no further action taken”. The City & Hackney Safeguarding Children Partnership (CHSCP), which covers the area where Child Q was searched, states that 25 children under the age of 18 were subjected to strip-searches by officers between 2020 and 2021. Of the 25 children, 19 were male and handcuffed during the process. Nothing was found during 22 (88%) of the searches and 20 (80%) had an outcome of “no further action recorded”. In terms of ethnicity, 15 (60%) of the children searched were black, two were white, six were Asian and two were Arab or North African.[xiii]

According to data obtained by a freedom of information request,172,093 people were subjected to this degrading and traumatic treatment between 2016 and 2021 across Britain — including 9,088 young people between the age of 10 and 17.[xiv] Webb asserted that the institutional racism and misogyny in the police needs to be seriously addressed. So, too, does institutional racism in our schooling system.[xv] The lesson from this “grim incident” is clear, we must all “redouble our efforts” to end the “scourge of racism that plagues our police forces, our educational institutions and all aspects of our society”.[xvi] In a similar vein, she points out that the Combahee River Collective have indicated that the “cruel, often murderous, treatment we [black women and girls] receive”, indicates how “little value has been placed upon our lives during four centuries of bondage in the western hemisphere”. The “liberation of all oppressed peoples” necessitates the “destruction” of the “political-economic systems of capitalism and imperialism as well as patriarchy”.[xvii]

TREC calls on the Government to conduct an urgent review of race and juvenile criminal justice and the disproportionate decriminalisation of young Black people, in general and the disproportionate use of strip searches against them, in particular. We also call for a reconsideration of the conclusion of the flawed Sewell Report and the official government response to it, that there is no institutional racism in Britain.

We hope that these unfortunate events will lead to a recognition that Black people are entitled to equal rights and justice and to be always treated with human dignity. The modern multicultural and multiracial realities of British society deserve no less.

[i]               Jim Gamble (2022): Local Child Safeguarding Practice Review: Child Q, March 2022. CHSCP. Available online <https://chscp.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2022/03/Child-Q-PUBLISHED-14-March-22.pdf>  

[ii]              Ibid.

[iii]             Ibid

[iv]             Ibid.

[v]              Oscar Dayus (2022): “UK Law On Stop And Search And Your Rights When Getting Strip-Searched After Police Apologies For Searching Lone Child” In  the Bristol Live website. Available online <UK law on stop and search and your rights when getting strip-searched after police apologise for searching lone child - Bristol Live (bristolpost.co.uk)>

[vi]                       [2013] EWHC 982 (Admin).

[vii]            Ibid.

[viii]           Kate Samuelson (2022): “The Law on Police Strip Searches” in the Week, March 17. Available online <https://www.theweek.co.uk/news/crime/956109/the-law-on-police-strip-searches>

[ix]            Catherine Micallef (2022): “Deeply Disturbing – Who is Child Q: Schoolgirl Was Strip searched While on Period” In the Sun, March 19. Available online <Who is Child Q? Schoolgirl who was strip-searched while on period (thesun.co.uk)>

[x]             Claudia Webb (2022): “The ‘Child Q’ incident fits into a pattern of racial inequality”  In the Morning Star, March 29. Available online < The ‘Child Q’ incident fits into a pattern of racial inequality | Morning Star (morningstaronline.co.uk) >

[xi]   Ibid.

[xii]  Ibid.

[xiii]           Kate Samuelson (2022) supra.

[xiv] Claudia Webb (2022) supra.

[xv]  Ibid.

[xvi] Ibid.

[xvii]         Ibid.