Kate was forced to strip naked at a Sydney festival. She still has nightmares about it

On the bad days, late at night, “Kate” finds herself back in the tent at a Sydney music festival, a terrified 18-year-old paralysed by fear.

She’s been ordered to strip naked, cornered in the small space and is bending over in front of two female police officers searching her for illicit drugs.

Kate was 18 when she was strip-searched by police at a Sydney music festival.Credit: Janie Barrett

During the search, Kate is repeatedly asked, and denies, having any drugs on her. One of the officers comments on Kate’s tampon before deciding against asking her to remove it. It’s been seven years, but the scene is etched vividly in her mind.

“It was just really dehumanising,” said Kate, a pseudonym this masthead has agreed to use to protect her privacy.

“It was really disempowering. I couldn’t tell them I wasn’t feeling safe, I wasn’t feeling comfortable, because in their eyes I was a criminal.”

When the search was over, the officers confiscated Kate’s ticket and kicked her out of the festival. She left alone, caught a train home and collapsed on her bed. No drugs were found on her.

“They didn’t even tell me it was going to be a strip-search,” she said. “It was just one clothing piece after another. I was just full-blown naked.”

For Kate, the incident reopened wounds she had tried to heal.

Just over a year earlier, when Kate was 17, two men cornered her in a small room, closed the door behind them, and sexually assaulted her.

“It was very re-traumatising,” she said.

Kate is among more than 70,000 people strip-searched by NSW Police officers in the past decade who did not have illicit drugs on them, according to new data published in a Redfern Legal Centre and Harm Reduction Australia report that analysed 10 years of the policing practice.

‘It was just one clothing piece after another. I was just full-blown naked.’

Kate, who was strip-searched when she was 18

According to the data – which had to be obtained by Greens MP Cate Faehrmann after NSW Police rejected Redfern Legal Centre’s requests under freedom-of-information laws – 82,471 people were strip-searched between January 2014 and December 2023. Of those searches, illicit drugs were found on 11,136 occasions – or 13.5 per cent of the time – according to the data, which takes in all strip-searches in NSW, including in-custody searches. The data does not show where the strip-searches were conducted, or what percentage were in-custody searches conducted at police stations or prisons.

From all searches, drug possession charges were laid 10.45 per cent of the time, while 2.45 per cent of people allegedly found with drugs on them were charged with supply offences. Of all searches conducted over the decade, 6503 convictions for drug possession or supply were recorded.

In 2016 alone, less than 1 per cent of the 14,279 people strip searched were convicted of drug supply offences, while 11.78 per cent – or 627 people – received a conviction for drug possession offences, according to the data.

Those numbers point to the unnecessary and unlawful use of strip-searches in NSW, says Samantha Lee, Redfern Legal Centre’s police powers and administrative law supervising solicitor.

“The punishment doesn’t meet the crime because in the majority of cases, there is no crime,” Lee says. “The police have subjected young people to, really, a lifetime of trauma on the basis of suspicion, which in the vast majority of cases, is unfounded.”

In May, the NSW Supreme Court heard Raya Meredith, the lead plaintiff in a class action against NSW Police, was also forced to undress, bend over and remove her tampon during a strip-search at Splendour in the Grass in 2018.

During the search, conducted by a female officer, a male officer walked unannounced into the makeshift cubicle in which Meredith was being searched. Like Kate, Meredith did not have drugs on her.

More than 3000 members joined the class action, brought in 2022 by legal firm Slater and Gordon and Redfern Legal Centre, which argues strip-searches conducted at music festivals between 2016 and 2022 were illegal. The lawsuit is the biggest class action ever brought against NSW Police, with damages of up to $150 million being sought.

On the eve of the first hearing date, NSW Police admitted in an amended defence that the search of Meredith was unlawful, throwing into doubt the legality of the searches of other group members. Justice Dina Yehia is expected to hand down her judgment in the coming months.

“By admitting fault, it symbolises to us that most likely, the majority of strip-searches that have been undertaken by police have been unlawful,” Lee said.

If successful, Lee said, the class action would “send a clear message to police that they can’t continue to subject young people and children to this invasive, humiliating practice”.

NSW Police’s use of drug detection dogs has also drawn criticism, with new data in the report showing 60 per cent of the time, dogs provided incorrect indications that individuals – who were later strip-searched – were in possession of illicit drugs.

Of the 6716 people strip-searched after an indication from a drug detection dog, 2713 were allegedly found with illicit drugs on them. Of the 2241 charged, 658 – or 9.8 per cent – were convicted of drug possession or supply. Both Kate and Meredith were told they were being searched because a drug detection dog had indicated they were carrying illicit drugs. However, both said the dog did not sit beside them – a typical indication someone may have drugs on them – and instead walked away after sniffing them.

In some cases reported to Redfern Legal Centre, individuals who were strip-searched claimed handlers had instructed a drug detection dog to sit beside them to justify a search.

Among the report’s seven recommendations is that police immediately abolish the use of strip-searching based on suspicion of minor drug possession; the strip-searching of children under 18; and the use of drug detection dogs at music festivals. It also recommends publicly releasing annual data on the number and outcome of strip-searches conducted each year, as well as the annual cost of deploying drug detection dogs.

Redfern Legal Centre’s Samantha Lee said strip-searching was causing the community a lot of trauma.Credit: Janie Barrett

“I don’t think, based on the statistics, that police or the government could continue to justify the use of strip-searches,” Lee said. “These statistics speak for themselves and tell us that this practice is causing a lot of trauma, and in most cases, is potentially unlawful.”

Lee says rather than combating drug supply, strip-searches based on suspicion of minor drug possession have left vulnerable people with lifelong trauma.

“Police have treated young people with a level of disdain, really,” Lee said. “They’ve known for a long time that the outcome of strip-searches is not justifiable in terms of its success rate to tackle supply, yet they’ve continued this practice over many years.”

Harm Reduction Australia president Gino Vumbaca said the “ends do not justify the means” and called for an immediate end to strip-searching.

“A hell of a lot of people have been put through this traumatic process for nothing,” Vumbaca said.

“What are we doing in our community that we’re subjecting people to this process for this extraordinarily low figure? If there was a health program that operated [with] these stats, you’d close it down.”

New data shows drug detection dogs incorrectly indicated that individuals were carrying illicit drugs 60 per cent of the time over a decade.Credit: Dean Sewell

In a statement, NSW Police said it “deploys various proactive strategies as part of an ongoing commitment to reducing crime in the community.

“Drug supply remains a serious offence and carries a significant risk of harm to the community,” it said.

“Police are required to suspect on reasonable grounds that the circumstances are serious and urgent when determining whether a strip-search is necessary. Officers are trained to deal with the public in a respectful and empathetic manner, and to be aware of potential cultural sensitivities.”

NSW Police said legislation under which strip-searches are conducted had “safeguards to preserve the privacy and dignity of members of the public” and that there were “additional safeguards for children ... and vulnerable people with which police must comply”.

In the years since she was strip-searched, Kate has struggled with the trauma of the incident. In the months after, she used illicit drugs to cope.

“I was taking a lot of substances, I was trying to numb [myself]. I was putting myself in more unsafe environments as well with people and the substances I used,” she said. “Just to get out of that space and disassociate from my body.”

When she hears sirens now, Kate dons noise-cancelling headphones to block out the sound. When a team of police officers and drug detection dogs searches a train station, she averts her eyes and walks the other way. Every few months, she’ll wake from a nightmare where she is back in the tent again.

“It’s made me kind of lose faith in terms of the police, and what their job is supposed to do – protect the community and uphold social justice,” she said.

“But it wasn’t social justice.”

As an 18-year-old, the incident left Kate with a sense of sadness. Over the years, that feeling has morphed into a sense of injustice.

“Now I can come to terms with what happened to me, and I’m actually angry [at] the injustice. I have so much rage,” she said.

Still, Kate hopes the class action’s outcome will help others avoid what she went through.

“It’s nothing about money. It’s just justice and recognition [of] how the police have got it wrong and instead of protecting the community, it actually causes more harm to people who have been impacted by trauma, sexual violence, domestic violence,” she said.

“I just don’t want any other woman or person to be subjected to the same things I’ve experienced.”

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