TRI In The News

Parents Sue School District After Son was Wrongly Accused of Stealing $20 and Strip Searched

December 14, 2012

From The Daily Mail

The parents of a 10-year-old boy who was strip searched by an assistant principal after he was wrongly accused of stealing $20 from a classmate are now suing the school district official over his treatment.

Clarinda and Lionel Cox, from Fayetteville, North Carolina, said their son Justin was left traumatised after Teresa Holmes ordered him to remove all of his clothes except for his T-shirt and boxer shorts.

The $20 note was later found under a table in the cafeteria of Union Elementary School in Clinton, where Justin was a third-grader at the time.

The Cox family has filed an 11-page complaint alleging that the search by Holmes, who has since retired, was a violation of the boy's constitutional protection from unreasonable searches.

'[Holmes] ordered J.C. to remove his shoes, socks, pants, and shirt,' the complaint reads.

'When J.C. was stripped down to his undershorts and undershirt, [Holmes] put her fingers inside the waistband of J.C.’s undershorts and ran her fingers around the waistband.

'[Holmes] also lifted J.C.’s undershirt and searched his bare torso.'

When Clarinda Cox later returned home that day, she found Justin waiting outside for her, which 'was unusual,' the lawsuit said. 'She made me take my clothes off,' the boy told his mother on her arrival.

John Whitehead, president of the Rutherford Institute, a Virginia-based civil liberties organization, told Fox News that the search was a violation of the boy's Fourth Amendment rights, which protects against unreasonable searches and seizures.

In 2009, the U.S. Supreme Court concluded school officials did not have the authority to strip-search a 13-year-old girl without evidence the item she held she posed a danger, Whitehead said.

'School officials often don't know the law,' he said. 'There's sort of this mentality that all kids are dangerous today... What you're talking about here was a $20 bill, not a gun or a knife.'

He added: 'The boy was traumatized and his parents were traumatized. There is direct Supreme Court precedent and they violated it.'

Aspokeswoman for Sampson County Schools referred inquiries to attorney Benjamin Wright, who did not respond to a request for comment.

Holmes no longer works at the school and retired in June, shortly after the Cox family stepped forward with their complaints.

Justin was searched after he came across money in the cafeteria and gave it back to the student.

But the $20 bill went missing again, and the girl told Holmes and accused the boy of stealing it, WRAL reported at the time. Holmes then confronted the boy about the theft claim.
'She didn’t ask me if she could, she told me, she said, "Now I have to strip-search you",' Justin said.

Holmes took the little boy to the men's room and ordered him to take off his clothes in the presence of a male janitor.

The assistant principal did not find the money, Cox said, and hugged Justin and apologized to him afterward.

Cox said she was upset that the school failed to notify her about the incident. When she came home from work, she learned about the strip-search from Justin, who was visibly distraught.

Sampson County Schools spokesperson Susan Warren admitted that Cox should have been informed about the search, but noted that Holmes did nothing wrong.

'The assistant principal was within her legal authority, her legal right, to do the search,' Warren said in a statement. 'She may have been overzealous in her actions.'

Ms Cox said that, regardless of the apology, her son was violated.

‘She came up to him and rubbed her fingers around inside of his underwear,’ she told WRAL. ‘If that isn't excessively intrusive, I don't know what is.’

Cox said she understands that in situations involving drugs or weapons, school officials are justified in conducting a strip-search, but not when it’s about $20.

But Holmes offered her side of the story, saying that Justin was seen diving under the table after the money, and several students and two teachers saw him pocket the banknote.

She urged him to tell her if he took the money, and in response Holmes said the ten-year-old told her, 'Go ahead and search me.'