German police under investigation for strip-searching young teens at school

Teachers stood by while the children were strip-searched, the Süddeutsche Zeitung newspaper reported on Monday.

Police offers were at the Friedrich-List Economics School last Tuesday to talk to a class of 27 students aged 13 and 14 about moral courage in a public setting, when one girl complained that €5 (worth $6.50) was missing from her jacket pocket.

This prompted the youth liaison officer to call for back-up and organize a strip-search of the teenagers. Four officers split the pupils according to gender and searched them in separate classrooms.

\"Some of the schoolgirls had to briefly open their bras, while some schoolboys had their underpants searched,\" police spokesman Wolfgang Wenger told the paper.

One 14-year-old boy told the paper a police officer had looked up his backside with a torch - after he had initially refused to take his underpants off.

By the afteoon, relatives of one student had called the police to complain. \"Our inteal investigations section took on the case immediately and went to the school that day to clear up the matter,\" said Wenger.

\"One can search bags and get people to take off their coats on suspicion of theft, even when it's only €5 (worth $6.50). But obviously it was way over the top to search the students in such an intimate fashion.\"  [Source]