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This is outrageous. An assistant principal at a elementary school in Clinton, North Carolina seems to think a strip search of a 10 year old is A-OK. How on earth is doing something like this okay without parental consent?
Clarinda Cox says her 10-year-old son, Justin, a student at Union Elementary School, was ordered to take off everything but his T-shirt and boxer shorts on June 1 after a girl accused him of taking $20. Justin told his mother that a girl dropped the money in the cafeteria and that he picked it up and gave it back to her, Cox says.
“If I felt he needed to be searched, I would have brought him into the bathroom,” she said Monday. “You could have had a witness in the bathroom with me. I would have searched my son.”
The justification is that Assistant Principal Teresa Holmes said the boy had lied many times over the course of the school year. This is from Holmes’s statement about the strip search:
I told Justin to take off his shoes. I looked inside them and moved the tongue of each shoe from left to right. I told him to take off his socks. I turned them inside out and looked at both of them. I could see that Justin had on a pair of over-sized boxers. I told him to take off his jeans. I checked every pocket, the hem of both legs and the waistband. I ran my hands around the outside of the waistband of his boxers. I gave him his jeans to put back on. I turned his socks back right side in and gave them to him to put back on. I gave him his shoes to put back on. I could see that he had a t-shirt on under his shirt, so I asked him to take off his shirt. I checked the pockets on the shirt as well as the hem of the shirt tail and the hem of the sleeves. I asked him to pull up his t-shirt so that I could see under it. I gave him his shirt to put back on.
At this point, I knew that Justin did not have the money. I sat in front of him telling him that I was sorry that I had to search him. I again explained that as a school administrator, I had the authority to search him because two teachers thought he had the money as well as seven or eight students.
Again, where was the phone call to the parents before she went anywhere near his underpants? Sampson County Schools spokesperson Susan Warren said Holmes had not violated any rules because the school janitor was present during the strip search.
By the way, school officials admitted that the $20 was found under a lunchroom table.
21 Comments
I certainly hope the principal and the school district have deep financial pockets, because the mom of the little boy sure has a case for a multi-million dollar lawsuit!
What’s up with these so-called “professionals” that they believe they have the right to violate a child’s civil rights like that! I’d like to see their reaction if *they* were forced to go through this for no reason!
What about little Clarinda Cox? What’s her punishment for lying, and the punishment of the “two teachers [who] thought he had the money as well as seven or eight students.” Now that they are all regular and known liars, when are THEIR strip searches scheduled?
Outrageous.
So…its ok for some lady to strip a 10 year old boy?
Without parental notification or consent?
uh….yeah, I say give everyone involved a serious background check to see who’s the child molester.
it does sound from what i’ve read that both district policy and North Carolina state law does allow this.
I AM NOT SAYING THIS IS RIGHT!!! far from it.
as a former school administrator i would never be permitted to do this by our laws & policies nor would i even think of something like this; our policy was limited to search of lockers & book bags and asking kids to empty their pockets & we had to have very good cause to even do those things, like the parent in the interview said, ‘drugs or weapons’.
the apology and the hug are NOT going to make up for the trauma this young man went through. i agree that the parent needs to hire an attorney and other parents need to mobilize immediately. outrageous is the only word to describe this violation.
with all the things in the news in which North Carolina has been involved for the last few months, it doesn’t sound like a safe place for anyone to live.
Prosecute the bastards for child sexual abuse.
Seems that a lot of people in NC have gone nuts lately. The school system should be sued and a special suit for the Asst. Principal. Did she check inside his underwear?
The quoted passage shows that Clarinda Cox is Justin’s mother.
Gotta love it. We’ve finally reached the presumption of guilt instead of the presumption of innocence, even if you’re 10. Makes me SO proud to be an American…
All I can say is that I’m more and more grateful that I’m not going to live long enough to see where this all ends. I grieve for you younger ones.
Amen
My son’s school is like this and I absolutely hate it. When my daughter was there 2 years ago, she had to spend several hours with her head on her desk (along with the rest of her class and the class next door) while the teachers berated and threatened them over a theft. It was awful. I will be so glad to get my son out of that school. Of course, there’s no guarantee that the next school will be better.
Back in the 40′s & 50′s it was always like that — certainly for the snips n snails n puppydog tails, and worse since there was no recourse. Justin and his mother have recourse.
x2
Well, let’s see. The police can strip search anyone they stop even if it’s for a minor infraction of the law. The obama administration advocated for this.
Well, let’s see. The TSA can grope anyone including babies.
I wonder where these school administrators get their ideas.
Things are out of control in this country.
Is this rape? Where is our sense of decency. Will anyone be punished for this outrage? This was unnecessary humiliation for pleasure.
This is total bullsh!# and people should be up in arms. Allowing anyone to disrobe your child in private is completely unacceptable. Doubly so when it is done for punitive reasons. This is the kind of schools you can expect when the elite run fascist government turns our school system into a training ground for child like workers who do as they’re told.
This school should thank its lucky stars that this wasn’t my kid. I wouldn’t rest until every one of them was fired. Twenty FKN dollars. Maybe if you thought he had a weapon. My God. What kind of passivity are they teaching our kids. The same kind of passivity the Catholic Church commanded and that was the DARK AGES.
A case of bad judgement that should have consequences. But folks are over-reacting IMO. If this is your idea of “trauma” you haven’t lived much.
the apology and the hug are NOT going to make up for the trauma this young man went through.
Yes, they are not.
In point of fact after I have been undressed and searched by someone is the “hug” a means of “making-up” or just more abuse tacked on to make the moron who did the strip-search feel better about herself?
If she were male and the incident took place at a workplace would she be charged with a crime?
If yes, then what makes this different?
“with all the things in the news in which North Carolina has been involved for the last few months, it doesn’t sound like a safe place for anyone to live.”
Why don’t you tell us where you live, and we’ll see if it’s only fragrance and light coming from there?
The “young ones” aren’t all angels, either–witness the school monitor incident where she was bullied to tears for absolutely no reason by a bus full of middle-schoolers.
The interesting thing is imagining if this were a girl and a male adult had strip-searched her. He’d be in prison so fast, your head would spin. Is there a double standard when it’s the female adult and a male child? Yes, there is still outrage, but I can’t imagine it wouldn’t be much worse for a male adult.
“Gotta love it. We’ve finally reached the presumption of guilt instead of the presumption of innocence, even if you’re 10. Makes me SO proud to be an American…”
For what it’s worth, juveniles do not have the same rights as adults in this country… simple reason being that, if children were entitled to the same due process rights as adults, neither the schools nor parents would be able to discipline a child without a formal trial.