A class action lawsuit alleging NSW Police conducted hundreds of unlawful strip searches at music festivals for years has begun this week.
A class action is a type of lawsuit where many people are represented by one plaintiff. In this case, the plaintiff is Raya Meredith, who alleges she was unlawfully strip-searched at a music festival in 2018.
Meredith represents a group of festival-goers who say they experienced “humiliation, indignity, and assault” by NSW Police between July 2016 and July 2022.
Strip searches
There are two types of police searches in NSW. General searches involve police patting down a person’s outer clothing, and passing a metal detector over them.
Strip searches – when a person is required to remove their clothing – should only be carried out in “serious and urgent” circumstances.
Before conducting any search, an officer must have a reasonable suspicion that a person is carrying an unlawful item, like drugs.
In NSW, a strip search must be conducted in a private area by an officer of the same sex as the person being searched.
During a strip search, an officer cannot search a “person’s body cavities” or inspect the “body by touch”.
Police “must not” ask a person to remove “more clothes” than is “reasonably necessary”.
If the person is under 18 or has “impaired intellectual functioning,” a parent or guardian must be present, unless a delay would lead to evidence being destroyed or others being harmed.
Class action
The lawsuit centres on the experience of lead plaintiff Raya Meredith, who was allegedly strip-searched at the 2018 Splendour in the Grass festival, when she was 27.
According to court documents, a police officer with a sniffer dog tapped Meredith on the shoulder at the festival entrance and took her to a “makeshift area” nearby.
Meredith alleges the area where she was searched was “comprised of a number of open makeshift cubicles... open in the direction of a screen [that was] approximately 1.5 metres high.”
The area “did not allow [Meredith] privacy“ from people entering the festival, she alleged.
Inside the cubicle, Meredith said she was “forced to remove her top, expose her breasts, and lift them” by a female officer.
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She was then instructed to remove her shorts and underwear, and then told to “pull out [her] tampon and show it to the female police officer.”
“The female Police Officer bent down and inspected the Plaintiff’s vagina as she pulled on the string of the tampon,” court documents say.
At this point, Meredith alleges, she was told to “bend over with her buttocks facing” the female police officer.
A male police officer then entered the area “without warning,” Meredith said.
Meredith said the encounter lasted about 30 minutes. No drugs or illegal items were found on her or in her belongings.
Lawsuit
Meredith and members of the class action are being represented by the law firm Slater and Gordon.
The firm alleges Meredith was assaulted by police because she was “forced to remove” her top, underpants, and tampon, and because the male police officer entered the cubicle, among other alleged violations.
It’s also alleged Meredith was falsely imprisoned because the search took half an hour, and because she was “forced to go into the cubicle”.
In addition to Meredith, lawyers will argue that “between at least 2016 and 2019”, hundreds of people were subjected to “extremely intrusive police procedures” that caused “both lasting and immediate trauma”.
It’s alleged that during this time, NSW Police were “carrying out strip searches of attendees at music festivals as a matter of routine and not in circumstances lawfully
justified”.
Meredith and the other plaintiffs are seeking damages for being “deprived of liberty… assaulted; put in fear [and] subject to a significant loss of dignity.”
Defence
NSW Police will argue the female officer was “authorised” to conduct the search, and had “reasonable grounds” to do so.
The defence will argue the search was justified based on:
a drug dog’s “positive indication that there was a prohibited substance in the airspace around the plaintiff”
Meredith’s admission to smoking cannabis earlier that day
Police observations of her “demeanour, physical appearance, and body language”.
Police will also argue the search area was sufficiently private.
