EXCLUSIVE: Three police officers involved in 'degrading strip search of 15-year-old school girl are named

Three police officers involved in a "degrading" and "traumatic" strip search of a 15-year-old black school girl have been named ahead of a misconduct hearing.

PC Victoria Wray and Trainee Detective Constable Kristina Linge carried out the search and PC Rafal Szmydynski was involved in the decision for it to go ahead with the latter.

The three are set for a hearing before a Met Police misconduct panel between June 2 and 27 this year.

The officers took the girl out of an exam at her school in Hackney and carried out the intimate search, while she was on her period, in December 2020, due to suspicions she was in possession of cannabis.

She was allegedly taken to the school's medical room and strip-searched by two female Met police officers, while teachers remained outside and without her parents being contacted.

It is alleged that her intimate body parts were exposed and she was made to take off a sanitary towel, but no drugs were found.

The three, who are attached to the Central East Command Unit, were named for the first time in a public notice published by the force ahead of the hearing.

It states: "These proceedings relate to the intimate search of a (then) 15 year-old Black schoolgirl, at her school on 3 December 2020, due to the suspicion of her being in possession of cannabis.

"It is alleged that PCs Linge and Szmydynski decided to perform an intimate search of the child when this was disproportionate in all the circumstances, and that PC Linge and PC Wray performed the search and/or allowed it to be performed, and in a manner which was unjustified, inappropriate, disproportionate, humiliating and degrading.

"It is contended that this was all without authorisation, in the absence of a suitable appropriate adult, contrary to MPS policy and training, Code C of the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984 (PACE), with no adequate concern being given to the child's age, sex, or the need to treat her as a child, and where the child's race was an effective cause of this."

It is also alleged that PC Szmydynski and PC Linge each made a misleading record of the search after its conclusion.

The standards of professional behaviour alleged to have been breached are authority, respect and courtesy, duties and responsibilities, equality and diversity, orders and instructions and discreditable conduct.

PCs Szmydynski and Linge are also alleged to have breached standards of professional behaviour in terms of honesty and integrity in relation to the record of the search.

If found guilty of the alleged breaches, the three officers could face being sacked from the force or a final written warning.

After a Local Child Safeguarding Practice Review, carried out by City and Hackney Safeguarding Children Partnership, was published in March 2022, the force admitted that the search should never have been carried out.

Det Supt Dan Rutland, of the Met's Central East Command, said at the time: "We recognise that the findings of the safeguarding review reflect this incident should never have happened."

The victim, named only as Child Q, told the review panel: "On top of preparing for the most important exams of my life, I can't go a single day without wanting to scream, shout, cry or just give up.

"I need to know that the people who have done this to me can't do it to anyone else ever again, in fact so no-one else can do this to any other child in their care."

Her mother said that after the strip-search her daughter had been asked to go back into the exam she had been sitting "without any teacher asking her about how she felt knowing what she had just gone through".

The girl's maternal aunt said she had changed from "top of the class" to "a shell of her former bubbly self" and that she was "now self-harming and requires therapy".

Hackney North and Stoke Newington MP Diane Abbot said after the review that she felt sick as a mother and that "racism absolutely played a part".

The review concluded that the search was "traumatic and harmful" and the impact had been profound and the repercussions "obvious and ongoing".

It added that it was also likely that "adultification bias" had been a factor, where adults perceive black children as being older than they are because they see them as more "streetwise".