By RHONDOR DOWLAT Saturday, October 10 2009

FOUR women yesterday came forward for the first time to talk about their traumatic experience when they were all stripped naked, made to squat and forced to cough three times in a washroom of the Police Administration Building in San Fernando on November 28, 2008.

The women believe senior police officers of the Southern Division kept the report of their humiliating strip-search under wraps for almost a year until their story broke in the wake of a public outcry over a similar incident involving secondary school students.

A police source told Newsday about the women’s case when commenting that cops were wrong to strip-search 32 form five students of St Joseph’s College in a report published yesterday.

After reading the story, the four women contacted Newsday to tell the story about their “very embarrassing, humiliating and traumatic” experience.

The secondary school students were stripped-searched when another student reported that $1,400 which she had in her school bag went missing.

The women too were strip-searched in a washroom of the Police Administration Building in San Fernando, where they worked, when a civilian reported $2,000 was stolen from her handbag. One Princes Town woman, aged 25, who arrived at work after the woman reported the money missing said she had asked several prominent lawyers for advice on the strip-search but none of them took on her case.

“I hope something comes out of it now, especially seeing that a similar incident occurred in one of our nation’s schools involving children.

If we as adults could go through so much trauma, one could just imagine what those children are going through.”

The woman said she arrived for work at 8.05 am and was told by colleagues that an hour before she got in a woman claimed money was taken from her handbag and she reported the matter to the San Fernando Police Station. Shortly after a policewoman arrived at the administrative building. The officer said she and six other employees were escorted through the reception area, in front of members of the public, to a washroom. They were told to form a line and wait as other officers arrived.

“At first I thought that they would be searching our handbags, desks, our pockets but little did I know that we were in for the most humiliating and traumatic time of our lives.” She said another employee was the first to go into the washroom and she came out crying after several minutes. She had been strip-searched.

“I tried to say I was not there when it happened and by right, I should not be strip-searched but still they forced me into the room because the senior officer clearly said to me he had ways in getting me to comply to the search,” the woman said.

The woman said the policewoman asked her to take off her clothes, to squat open her legs and cough three times.

“I was very embarrassed and up to now still remain traumatised.

How was I going to face my superiors and my co-workers again after that incident, especially when I was innocent and then to know in the end that the money was never found,” she said. One 44-year-old woman from Penal said she felt degraded after the strip-search.

“I felt like I was raped,” the Penal woman said. Acting Police Commissioner James Philbert has since apologised to the seven women but none of the officers who conducted the search did.

Yet another employee, a 25-year-old woman from San Fernando, said she was emotionally disturbed for months after and had counselling sessions with a psychiatrist. The other women got counselling too.

“It was difficult telling our parents, boyfriends, husbands and the rest of our family. What about our children, who some of us have?”

The youngest woman, who is 24, said she was treated as if she was a criminal.