Stripped school girls being taunted –yet to receive counselling

 

TWO weeks after two Santa Rosa Secondary School female students were embarrassing strip-searched regarding an incident of stolen money, they are yet to receive counselling.The girls are now complaining that they are being taunted by some boys who had peeped them as they were undergoing the traumatic experience of being strip-searched.

The Guyana Chronicle understands that a major meeting will be held on October 1st in the auditorium of the Santa Rosa Secondary School in Region One, and officials from the Education Ministry, together with the village toshao, police from the district police stations and parents of students, will discuss the allegations and circumstances under which the teenagers were strip-searched.

Police Press Officer, Superintendent Jairam Ramlakhan, in a recent press statement, had said that acting Police Commissioner David Ramnarine, in responding to the allegation, noted that an investigation has revealed that ranks at the Acquero Police Station had received a report from the School Welfare Officer at about 18:15hrs on September 13, 2016, stating that a sum of money, property of the matron of the dormitory of Santa Rosa Secondary School, had gone missing or was stolen.

“The subordinate officer-in-charge and a constable accompanied the School Welfare Officer to the dormitory, where the children’s bags were searched by the School Welfare Officer. However, no money was found. At this time, the School Welfare Officer proposed, and insisted to conduct, a search on each child, but the subordinate officer objected and indicated that it would be improper in the circumstance for the police to sanction this; and he and the constable left the school. The subordinate officer has stated that he later learnt that the children were searched by the School Welfare Officer.”

Meanwhile, according to the mother of one of the victims, her 14-year-old daughter “is feeling ashamed to go to school, because the dormitory where she was stripped is in the same compound with the school, and other students are harassing the girls about what happened to them”.

She said the teenagers were asked to strip naked in the presence of the School Welfare Officer. The girls had refused to take off their clothes, saying that they were having their monthly menstruation, but the two policemen had reportedly threatened to throw them in the lock-up.

According to the mother of five, the School Welfare Officer also reportedly told the girls that she sees nothing wrong in them taking off their clothes with their menstruation, since as a woman she experiences the same things.

She further alleged that before the strip-search started, the policemen took away the girls’ cell phones so they could not make contact with their parents to inform them about what was happening to them.

As such, the girls became traumatised and began to cry. Even though the search was carried out on them, no money was found. But while all this was ongoing, some school boys who are also staying in the dorms were reportedly peeping the girls being strip-searched.

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