She was carrying drugs that day but said once the sniffer dog sat down next to her, she was stripped of her “human rights”.<\/p>\n
“I told them I had a history of sexual assault \u2026 but they were very forceful about it,” she said.<\/p>\n
She described the incident as re-traumatising and years later she wished she had taken more action.<\/p>\n
“I can’t believe I have no say over my human body,” she said.<\/p>\n
“I don’t care if you’re police, you’re a stranger to me.”<\/p>\n
On Wednesday, NSW Police Commissioner Mal Lanyon apologised to a separate woman who was awarded $93,000 after being unlawfully strip searched at a festival in Sydney.<\/p>\n
But Kristelle said apologies did not change what people had experienced.<\/p>\n
“There are boundaries to this process, you need to think this is literally a human being, and we have rights, and police are just in this grey area,” she said.<\/p>\n
Landmark ruling this week<\/p>\n
In the same year as Kristelle, Raya Meredith was asked by an officer to remove a tampon while naked during a strip search at the Splendour in the Grass festival.<\/p>\n
Ms Meredith launched legal action, and later became the lead plaintiff in a class action involving 3,000 people who were searched by NSW Police at music festivals between 2016 and 2022.<\/p>\n
In a landmark ruling on Tuesday, Supreme Court Justice Dina Yehia determined Ms Meredith, who was 27 at the time, had been subjected to “humiliating” treatment by NSW Police.<\/p>\n
She was awarded $93,000 in compensation and aggravated damages for assault, battery and false imprisonment and for the way police had conducted the case.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Ms Meredith became the lead plaintiff in a class action involving 3,000 people who were searched by NSW police at music festivals. (Russell Privett\/triple j)<\/p>\n
Lawyers behind the class action said the ruling could render “thousands of strip searches unlawful”.<\/p>\n
“We’re urging the state to bring this shameful chapter of police abuses to an end and negotiate a settlement for the remainder of the group,” senior associate William Zerno said.<\/p>\n
If the class action is successful, the NSW government could be liable to pay a total of $150 million in damages.<\/p>\n
Police ‘falling short’<\/p>\n
Commissioner Lanyon was asked if he had a message for Ms Meredith at a press conference on Wednesday.<\/p>\n
“I apologise [to Ms Meredith]. What has been reported is outside our policy and practice,” he said.<\/p>\n
He argued strip searches were a vital tool in police arsenal to combat drugs and weapon possession.<\/p>\n
“So if people have a firearm, people have a knife, it’s really important we have that,” he said.<\/p>\n
“We have changed education significantly \u2026 we are focused on making sure we do it appropriately \u2026 with dignity, that we do it to keep the community and the police safe.”<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Mr Cowdery says strip searches should be a last resort. (ABC News)<\/p>\n
Former NSW director of public prosecutions Nicholas Cowdery said strip searches should be a last resort.<\/p>\n
“Police have to understand when you invade the privacy and the dignity and the bodily integrity of a person, you are potentially causing that person very serious harm,” he said.<\/p>\n
“That needs to be the warning bell that sounds before any police officer conducts a strip search.<\/p>\n
“It is a matter that has to be supported by knowledge, rather than suspicion, but police are just falling short at present.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"At just 18 years old, Kristelle left a music festival in Sydney’s west feeling like she had been…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":182616,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[76356,64,63,36423,2973,2462,108328,44,4277,116979,116978,18990,116980,670],"class_list":["post-182615","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-australia","tag-apology","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-class-action","tag-courts","tag-lawsuit","tag-mal-lanyon","tag-news","tag-nsw-police","tag-nsw-police-commissioner","tag-splendour-in-the-grass","tag-strip-search","tag-strip-searches","tag-sydney"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/182615","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=182615"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/182615\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/182616"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=182615"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=182615"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=182615"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}