Just look what I found when doing some search on the inmate and detainee rights. The news is over two years old, but I have two reasons for bringing it up. The first one is that as in law there are crimes that never expire, in social relations there is shame that never goes off. If you ask me, this is one of such cases. The second reason is that the story made me recall an event which has happened recently in Poland, and one other I saw on the net earlier today. Straying from my personal guidelines about making Alley topics, I am including a poll in this one. More about the poll in the bottom of this post. Please consider the matter first:

Vice principal on leave after thong check reports

POWAY, Calif. (AP) — A school official was placed on leave Wednesday amid accusations that she lifted girls' skirts — in front of male students and adults — to make sure they weren't wearing thong underwear at a dance.

Rita Wilson, assistant principal at Rancho Bernardo High School since 1997, was told Wednesday afternoon that she had been placed on administrative leave while officials complete an investigation, school district officials said.

Students complained that they were told to line up outside the high school gym before entering Friday's dance so Wilson could check girls' underwear. Those wearing thongs were turned away.

"They just lifted the skirt over my head," Stephanie Olson, an 11th grader at the school, said. "I didn't know what was going on."

Students said the vice principal and a female counselor checked underwear in front of male students, teachers and two police officers outside the school.

"Everyone saw everything," said Kim Teal, whose 15-year-old daughter attended the dance but was not checked. "It was a big peep show."

Jim Teal said he was outraged when he heard about the searches.

"To me, that is sexual assault," he said. "You don't do that to anybody, but especially not to kids. "These kids are depending on the administrators to protect them."

Wilson could not be reached for comment Wednesday. She did not return messages left at the school and her home number was unlisted.

School officials continued to interview students and staff to determine what happened at the casual MORP dance, prom spelled backward. About 725 students attended in costume.

Don Phillips, superintendent of the Poway Unified School District, sought to mollify parents calling for Wilson's removal, saying the inquiry has the highest-possible priority.

"As a parent myself, I certainly understand the concern these allegations have raised," Phillips said in a statement. If the allegations are true, he said, Wilson's actions "were clearly outside our school district's policies and procedures."

Officials at the local chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union were planning to meet with several parents and students who complained about the skirt-lifting incident, said legal director Jordan Budd.

"It's really quite astounding that a school administrator would believe it to be appropriate to require every girl who attended a dance to partially disrobe in public on the off chance one might subsequently engage in misconduct," Budd said.Source: http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2002/05/02/thong-check.htm

Alternative sources:

http://www.nashvillescene.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?story=Back_Issues:2002:May_9-15_2002:Columns:Helter_Shelter

http://www.nbcsandiego.com/news/1427309/detail.html

http://www.nospank.net/n-i95.htm

And amidst the Meathead Award Winners along with two other retarded teachers, collecting her justly deserved praise:

http://www.usnewslink.com/2002meatheads.htm

Now on to the poll. Before voting, please realise that the vote is anonymous. For whatever reason, if a particular question bothers you, you can choose to omit that question. This is because I want to collect so many votes as possible for each question.

My answer is no mystery: I believe that the woman should receive dishnourable discharge from the educational field with no right of return. Her place is in jail among sexual assailants for what she did was a sexual assault even if there had been no conscious sexual motive (I'm prone to believe there was an unconscious one, but this is besides the point).

What was she thinking when doing that? The lifting of skirts was already dumb, as some of the girls actually weren't wearing any underwear. It was already paramount thoughtlessness normally characteristic of the mentally constipated. But at least the moron can say she hadn't thought they wouldn't wear anything under skirts. But when she was pulling up or down their tops to check if they had been wearing bras, she clearly knew she would be exposing their bare breasts to all the boys and male adults present.

Yet another concern, somewhat incidental but in no way irrelevant to the problem, is who the **** was she thinking gave her the right physically to assault the teenagers like that. It was a regular physical assault apart from sexual assault. I would already have trouble with it, if a teacher assaulted my child that way.

The on-campus cops present, however, chose not to intervene. Someone should have physically restrained that mad woman.

After that, she is actually teaching a class and feeling sad and disappointed at what happened. I feel sad and disappointed at the fact she isn't rotting in jail (she clearly isn't normal, but considering the circumstances, there was enough of willing stupidity to make jail a better choice than an asylum, IMHO).

I believe it's high time to crack down on such teachers and school officials, as well as the type of policeman or policewoman that gets involved in such things. Some other examples:

Think the government wants to protect your rights? Think again. In January, as many as 30 teenagers were forced to strip down to their undergarments by government school teachers, who were searching for stolen CDs, money and makeup. The teenagers were given two choices - they could strip themselves or the teachers would strip them.

From: http://www.libertarianrock.com/topics/stripsearch/cdsearch.html

Another one:

The case began May 1.1992, Two Alabama girls were forced to submit to strip searches after a second-grade classmate accused them of stealing $ 7 and putting it in the backpack of the other girl. No money was found.

The two girls were taken to a restroom and told by music teacher to remove their clothes. They were told to come out of the toilet stalls with their underpants down to their ankles, which they did. A second strip-search of each girl was conducted a short time later,but no money was found.

The School Board investigated the incidents and concluded that the girls not been strip-searched.

The parents of the two girls sued, but a federal lower court dismissed the lawsuit, and a appeal court upheld the decision, ruling that the teachers enjoyed partial immunity from the constitutioal claim, and also concluded strip searches would not have been clearly unconstitutional in 1992. By an 8 : 3 vote

The appeals court took into accout the Supreme Court's 1985 ruling, such searches must be " reasonably related in scope to the circumstances " which justified the interference in the first place,and said school administrators have greater flexibility to search students, but added that the search cannot be " excessive intrusive."

The School Board acknowledged that the music teacher had committed a " gross error " in judgment, but found insufficient evidence and rejected the superintendent's recommendation that the music teacher be fired.

For seven freaking bucks. And another freaking idiot of a teacher who should rot in jail or psych ward, depending on closer examination. Notice that the first court concluded that the girls were not strip searched, i.e. that 1=0.

From: http://www.aba.ne.jp/~sugita/13engfuku.html

Yet another example - this time it was a juvenile detention centre:

The case stemmed from an incident in November 1999, when a guard at the Okanogan County juvenile detention facility strip-searched the then- 15-year-old girl after she had been taken into custody for failing to appear at a truancy hearing, a civil matter. Authorities had no reason to believe that she was concealing weapons or contraband. The search was conducted in a room containing a large window that looked out to a building entrance where people congregated, as well as before an open door, making it possible for other juveniles and detention staff to see the search in progress.

From: http://www.aclu-wa.org/Issues/privacy/Okanogan.html

But teens don't always end up in detention centres for teens. Sometimes they end up in regular jail with no charge whatsoever. There was no cause for a reasonable search, let alone detention. And where was habeas corpus? And yeah, it was illegal. So:

An Illinois teenager filed a civil suit Wednesday in U.S. District Court in Birmingham claiming she was illegally strip-searched and incarcerated in the Homewood City Jail as a 16-year-old.

From: http://www.unknownnews.net/c0808-1.html

Another one. This time it's teachers again. The police didn't authorised sad, so the bastards where acting totally illegally and displaying a mighty ignorance of the law of which they made themselves self-proclaimed guardians. See how they destroyed a prom here:

The boys remained in the locker room while the girls went back to the gym. The boys were taken one by one into the shower room by a male teacher and told to lift their shirts and drop their pants and underwear.

Two Northfield Township police officers arrived and told female staff members to search the girls in the same manner that the boys were searched. The female acting principal and two other female staff members gathered the girls together and told them to lift their blouses and drop their pants, one by one.

Why aren't they in jail for that? Sex assault if I've ever seen one.

http://www.metrotimes.com/editorial/story.asp?id=407

Yet another one:

In February 1998, nine Killian High School students who produced an obscene underground newsletter tested the limits of how far student-press rights advocates were willing to go to protect freedom of speech. In December 2001, one of the “Killian Nine” had her day in court.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit heard arguments on Dec. 7 in Liliana Cuesta’s case regarding a strip search. Cuesta, arrested for publishing threatening comments, was examined on Feb. 20, 1998, in accordance with Miami-Dade County’s “zero tolerance policy,” which mandates that a person arrested for a felony be “completely strip searched by a correctional officer as part of the intake process.”

Good job, bastard.

From: http://www.splc.org/report_detail.asp?id=747&edition=20

This was only teachers and, to a very limited extent, correction. In short, dealing with minors.

To see how workers, restaurant guests, adult detainees and inmates are treated, refer here: http://www.sorcerers.net/cgi-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?/topic/34/49.html. Incidentally, there still are minors among those, or barely adult people (17-19).

In my view, the conclusion is simple: not everyone has to be a teacher. Not everyone has to be a police or correction centre or prison officer ("officer"... they are Joe Privates with one or two occasional NCOs among them) or official. Come to think about it in this context, not everyone has to work. There are people with such issues that they should actually be treated and not given such responsible duties. However, I still maintain that they are sane enough to deserve jail for what they do. If they refuse to change their attitude, let them rot in jail and starve when they finally come out of it. To such people as these, the society shouldn't have much duty. If they won't change their attitude, they should be out. Time for the government to root out those perverts and sociopaths.

Poll Information
This poll contains 4 question(s). 35 user(s) have voted.
You may not view the results of this poll without voting.

Poll Results: She's saddened and disappointed - but what do YOU think? (35 votes.)

Demotion makes her sad and dissapointed. What do you think she should have got? (Choose 1)
* She deserved it - 11% (4)
* She did the right thing - 0% (0)
* She should have been fired - 49% (17)
* She should have been put to jail, preferably for long - 40% (14)
* Just give me the results - 0% (0)

Should teachers be allowed to strip-search students? (Choose 1)
* Yes, they should be - 0% (0)
* Yes, but underwear should be the line they don't cross - 11% (4)
* No, they shouldn't be at any time - 89% (31)
* Just give me the results - 0% (0)

Do you believe that the consequences those teachers face are not dire enough? (Choose 1)
* They get what they deserve - 26% (9)
* They deserve more punishment - 71% (25)
* They deserve less punishment - 0% (0)
* They don't deserve punishment - 0% (0)
* They should receive praise... - 0% (0)
* Just give me the results - 3% (1)

Do you believe the problem is alarming and something should be done to fix it? (Choose 1)
* Yes. Time to wake up and do something - 49% (17)
* If possible, yes, things could be less complicated a bit - 43% (15)
* There's no such problem. You're thinking stuff up, chev - 9% (3)
* Just give me the results - 0% (0)

Yes, she was out of line. Even if she DID insist on checking the underwear, then it could have been done with less of an audience. It was in extremely poor taste, and rather stupid of her. She should be fired and have to answer to a court of law, both criminally and civilly...

That is f'ed up, thats all I can say. How can people do this to children?

Agreed, even more 'f'ed up'(as Cesard puts it) is that she said she was trying to protect them from the possiblity of being sexually assaulted.

she said she was trying to protect them from the possiblity of being sexually assaulted. Oh yes. Obviously, any woman wearing a thong has a much higher chance of being sexually assaulted then one not wearing a thong. They just leave out that the chance of being sexually assaulted by a teacher is what goes up.

I also have a problem with the thought - though not directly stated it was implicit in her remarks - that girls wearing thongs are promiscuous.

Does anyone have any more information, like what eventually happened? That was over 2.5 years ago, I imagine it has been resolved at this point.

For the second question, I responded no, but really my opinion of that is that strip seaches should only be conducted with reasonable cause, in private, by the proper type of authority - you know, the same rules that apply to adults.

So a hidden thong makes you more vaunerable to sexual assault? I do not see the logic in this.

Name an instance when young pupils need to be stripsearched, because I cannot.

I have a huge problem with teachers doing this type of thing. They have enough power just by virtue of their position, they don't need any more.

I recall an article on locker searches, and I think (although I am not 100% sure) that such searches needed to be done by the principal or someone in the administration of the school, not a teacher.

If the administration has such quasi-policing power, then I suppose under dire enough circumstances that clearly warranted a strip search, an appropriate member of the school administration, who had received instruction similar to what a police officer receives, could be allowed to do a same-sex, private search. But I really think it should be severely limited.

Locker searches are overrated, I think. They only really stand a chance of success if you're looking for large and relatively unique objects.

As for strip-searches, I am dead-against cross-gender strip-searches, although in the Anglo-Saxon common law system, there's been a notion that the cops' and prison guards' "equal employment rights" are more important than the searched's privacy, modesty and whatever else. I believe a person who believes that is a sociopath and had better be isolated from the society, and note that I don't say such things often. I really wish on all the female judges who ruled that that one day they end up in jail guarded by male guards.

Same gender strip-searches for a reasonable cause and in a reasonable manner, yeah. However, in 99.99% cases, having the person strip to underwear is enough. Cops just seem to want some additional certainty. And they too often lose the distinction between looking and touching, or between strip search and cavity search. Plus, I think there should be a limit on strip-searches, like you can't do that unless life is threatened, or at least a monetary value limit. Strip-search about a lost $100 is ridiculous, let alone one about $7.

I believe that all cops in question and all teachers should be fired beyond ever coming back to public service. Their place is in psychwards or jails.

Name an instance when young pupils need to be stripsearched, because I cannot.People with tendencies to abuse drugs and mutilate themselves. But the search can be private, same-gender and all. But this is about the only exception and the reason is the searched's own safety and not a dumb cop feeling important.

In many cases, they only need to check your clothes and underwear. They don't need to see you naked. This means there is no necessity to allow them to be looking.

[ February 05, 2005, 08:24: Message edited by: chevalier ]

Some kind of justice is being served:

http://www.modbee.com/local/story/9898681p-10742547c.html

LIVINGSTON — Robert Wendel has lost his job as principal of Livingston High School two months after administrators there put four students through strip searches in an effort to find $21.
About 300 students protested in front of the school Friday afternoon after learning that Wendel would not return Monday. He had been Livingston High principal for 10 years, and is now to become a program specialist in the Merced Union High School District office. Wendel is the second administrator to be demoted as a result of the Dec. 3 strip searches. On Jan. 12, the school board removed Dalila Hernandez as vice principal and reassigned her as a teacher at Buhach Colony High School in Atwater.

A police report indicates Hernandez carried out the searches, with Wendel's approval, after someone reported the theft of cash from a gym locker. The money was not found.

Within days, Wendel apologized to the girls and took full responsibility for what he called an "improper search."

Earlier this week, the girls' parents asked the board of trustees to remove Wendel.The problem is, what if the bloody money had been found? What about the three remaining students who were searched?

Notice that the search was to underwear only:

According to a Livingston police report, Hernandez told the four teenage girls to go into an instructor's office and remove their clothing down to their underwear in the presence of a female instructor and Hernandez. The missing money was never found.(http://www.mercedsun-star.com/local/story/9885813p-10731405c.html

So we can imagine a full strip-search would have been punished more severely.

Where do you find this stuff, Chevalier? The woman who did it is evil-minded--she probably thinks otherwise--and should go to the "bad place". The mealymouthed reactions of the local powers are both predictable and abysmal. What's the point of having freedom if you don't understand what that means?

f'ed up!!! I Agree!!! It's Absolute bull!!!