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Can employees of Nyc public schools really do this?

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J

jaxinthebox

New member
What is the name of your state? What is the name of your state? New York

Yesterday after school my 13yr old son informed me that after lunch he was told to go to the office. When he got to office he told me that the principal (female) and two other ladies who work in the school were also there. Then my son said they started to ask him questions regarding being abused at home. They explained to him that someone noticed a scratch on his upper right side of his back and asked him how it got there. Then they asked him to pull his pants and underwear down because they needed to make sure there were no other marks on him and that he's safe. The three women employees did not find any other marks on him and he was sent back to class. Is this legal because they're all women?

Thanks to anyone who replies.
 
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LdiJ

LdiJ

Senior Member
I would be screaming and yelling about the pulling down the pants and underwear. One simply does not do that to a teenager. I would be complaining to the principal's boss.
 
FlyingRon

FlyingRon

Senior Member
No, that's not how an investigation occurs. They have acted improperly. School office staffers are not vested with the knowledge or authority to conduct body searches on suspected abuse victims. They are required to make report of bona fide suspicions and let the proper people investigate.
 
quincy

quincy

Senior Member
I would want to know what the school officials say about the search.

Here, first, is a link to the 2009 US Supreme Court Opinion in Safford Unified School District #1 v. Redding, on a strip search for drugs conducted in a California school:
https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/08pdf/08-479.pdf
Here is a link to a New York Times article from January on a Binghamton, New York, school search, with facts in dispute:
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.nytimes.com/2019/01/30/nyregion/binghamton-school-strip-search.amp.html
And here is a link to the Complaint filed by the middle-school students on April 29, 2019, over the Binghamton school strip search:
https://www.naacpldf.org/wp-content/uploads/Binghamton-Complaint.pdf
 
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C

commentator

Senior Member
Well, I have to interject a small note of doubt here. Before you go filing complaints and hiring attorneys. Is this only verified by the child? As Ron says, this is not the way an abuse investigation occurs, this is not SOP for any investigation that I've heard of, though it might be in someone's mind. Through the years, I have watched people sometimes get wildly up in arms over a story told by a school child about the behavior of school officials only to discover that it was a child yanking the parents chain. THREE educational professionals who should've known better.....at least one of them should've known better, and yet they basically strip searched a child without knowing about these other things that were problems for school districts and having had no training in how to conduct abuse investigations or having had training they ignored, just for the fun of getting to strip search a 13 year old. And by the way, whom they told all about why they were doing it. (we suspect your mother is abusing you because of the scratch on your back). Just sounds a bit....well, off.

Let me add, since the above cited cases were in the same state as this OP, they'd have likely had media attention in the local news these folks are watching. I think that would tend to make the school staff even more conscious of the issues that would be raised by any sort of stripdown examination of a student.
 
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quincy

quincy

Senior Member
I tend to trust what children say - and I would never entirely discount a story they told, especially one of this magnitude - BUT I definitely would want a fuller picture of what occurred in the school office before calling the police or running to the media or claiming rights have been violated.
 
C

commentator

Senior Member
I'm just going all based on my subjective experience here, of course. In my experience, children will sometimes er, well, fabricate a bit or mix things up, get things confused. When listening to children one should always try to be balanced in approach. And yes, we do have to believe what children tell us, but with certain caveats. I am put off by several aspects of this very limited bit of information we have been given to deal with. One is the age of the child.

Thirteen is pretty old for the school staff to be having suspicions of the child being abused at home for the first time. And with a thirteen year old, the situation doesn't add up somehow. Is the child coming to school unclean, neglected, battered? Just how big and bad is this scratch on his back? How did someone see it? Doesn't this school have a counselor on staff who would deal with this sort of situation first and foremost, other than just a random call to the office and being forced to undress so that some staff members can look for evidence of abuse? Was this the school counselor who carried out this investigation, the principal, the office staff member? Is there more or less to this whole story? One certainly has to look at a fuller picture.
 
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LdiJ

LdiJ

Senior Member
commentator said:
I'm just going all based on my subjective experience here, of course. In my experience, children will sometimes er, well, fabricate a bit or mix things up, get things confused. When listening to children one should always try to be balanced in approach. And yes, we do have to believe what children tell us, but with certain caveats. I am put off by several aspects of this very limited bit of information we have been given to deal with. One is the age of the child.

Thirteen is pretty old for the school staff to be having suspicions of the child being abused at home for the first time. And with a thirteen year old, the situation doesn't add up somehow. Is the child coming to school unclean, neglected, battered? Just how big and bad is this scratch on his back? How did someone see it? Doesn't this school have a counselor on staff who would deal with this sort of situation first and foremost, other than just a random call to the office and being forced to undress so that some staff members can look for evidence of abuse? Was this the school counselor who carried out this investigation, the principal, the office staff member? Is there more or less to this whole story? One certainly has to look at a fuller picture.
Click to expand...
The OP said that it was the Principal and two other ladies that work in the office. I tend to believe the child's story because there has been no indication that the child was in trouble for anything that he might want to divert attention away from.

I suggested making a complaint to the principal's boss (possibly the assistant superintendent if that is what that person is called in the OP's area). Because that is taking it up the rung a step, without going to the extreme of calling the police yet.
 
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