Dozens of children strip-searched by police over summer

NSW police strip-searched more than two dozen children, including a 12-year-old, in the four months to mid-February, despite a Minns government promise to review the controversial practice.

A freedom-of-information request filed by the Herald suggested that NSW Police continued strip-searching children at the same rate as before the government review was announced.

Strip-searching children, in which police direct children to remove their clothes and sometimes to lift their genitals, usually without a parent or guardian present, has been criticised by health experts for causing serious long-term trauma and harm to children’s development.

In October, after The Sydney Morning Herald reported that at least 115 girls and boys aged from 12 to 17 were strip-searched in two years to June 2023, the Minns government committed to review the policies underpinning the practice and directed NSW Police to do likewise.

Police and sniffer dogs at the Listen Out Festival in Sydney last September.Credit: Dean Sewell

An FOI request filed by the Herald shows police strip-searched 26 children between October 18, 2023 and February 14, 2024. They found weapons only three times, prompting legal concerns that the police were often not meeting the legal threshold to justify a strip-search.

Police Minister Yasmin Catley said she knew the data would be concerning for the community, and that she had been meeting with key stakeholders over the past months on this matter.

“The very role of minister is to consider the current policy settings, whether they’re fit for purpose and how they affect the people of NSW. That’s exactly what’s being done in this instance,” Catley said. “In doing so, it’s important to balance community expectations with community safety.”

Catley’s office declined to give a timeframe for the review. NSW Police declined to comment.

The Herald’s FOI data shows that the 26 children strip-searched since October included a 12-year-old, two 13-year-olds and one 14-year-old.

In the four-month period, there were 14 children strip-searched “in the field”, which includes 10 in public places such as shopping centres, music festivals and parks, and four in police stations without officially being in custody. A further 12 children were strip-searched while in police custody.

The strip-searches of boys and girls were almost even, but the children strip-searched in custody were overwhelmingly boys.

Redfern Legal Centre senior solicitor Samantha Lee said there should be a pause on all strip-searches of children while the review was ongoing.

Lee said that when she met clients who had been strip-searched as children, there was a deep level of shame and trauma that was similar to speaking to a survivor of sexual assault. Often the child never told their parents about it.

“I’ve taken instruction from clients years later who are very traumatised,” Lee said. “A common scenario is that they start to cry, they seem shaky, and they are scared about reporting it even now.”

Lee said young men often felt acute embarrassment and shame that they stood in front of two adult male police officers and lifted their penis or scrotum, and feel they should have somehow prevented it from happening.

Greens justice spokeswoman Sue Higginson said strip-searching children was a policing method that did not work, given that most of the time nothing was found.

“We know that [strip-]searching is a terribly degrading exercise and a genuine violation of somebody’s dignity, and the reality is the threshold for a police officer to have the power to do that is very, very low,” Higginson said.

“We are talking about the most vulnerable people within our community: young children, First Nations children, children of ethnic backgrounds, children who are poor, who are disadvantaged, who have more often than not experienced trauma in their lives.”

Associate Professor Liz Scott, from the Brain and Mind Centre Youth Model at the University of Sydney, told the Herald in October that strip-searching children was “draconian and totally heavy-handed” and “may cause long-term harm”.

The FOI figures suggest police are disproportionately searching Aboriginal children. In the October-February timeframe, seven of the 26 children were Aboriginal. The 2021 census shows only one in 16 children in NSW is Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander.

The reason for the search authority in the 14 strip-searches when the young person was not in custody were mostly to “ensure does not harm self or others” and “suspected possession of illegal drug”, which accounted for five searches each.

Across the 14 strip-searches not in custody, the police found a total of nine items including a book/stationery item and two cash/documents, two drugs and one drug implement, and three sharp/cutting instruments.

Police must carry out a strip-search only if they reasonably suspect that is it necessary for the purpose of the search, and that the seriousness and urgency of the circumstances make a strip-search necessary. It is considered a strip-search if the person must remove more than their outer layer of clothes such as a jacket or hat, or the police officer looks down their top or pants.

Lee said suspecting a person to be carrying a firearm or a knife or a supply quantity of drugs would meet the legal threshold for a strip-search, but minor drug possession did not.

Redfern Legal Centre has also analysed long-term data on police strip-searches of children, also obtained under FOI, for a seven-year period up to June last year.

In a report published on Monday, the legal centre says 1546 children were strip-searched during that time, an average of 220 a year, including a boy as young as 10, and 45 per cent were Indigenous. The practice peaked in 2017-18 before falling during the pandemic.

The legal centre’s FOI provides a higher estimate for 2021-22 and 2022-23, suggesting as many as 174 children had been searched over those two years rather than the 115 previously reported by the Herald. NSW Police told the legal centre the discrepancy was because their databases were dynamic.