“Seeing that I have my period, that wasn’t nice. Who would want to pull down their panty and have somebody else search you?”
A distraught Hadasa Murray of Akers made the comment Wednesday evening, hours after she was taken to the Criminal Investigations Department at the Central Police Station and strip-searched despite protesting that she was having her period.
Murray said she arrived from Bequia by ferry around 2 p.m Wednesday with her boyfriend. As they walked towards the main gate located near Massy Stores at the ferry berth in Kingstown, they were stopped by police officers on duty there who informed them of their intention to conduct a search. She said they were taken to a booth and a bag with clothes they were carrying was searched but nothing illegal was found.
She said another officer approached and told her they would like her to get into the police transport to be taken to the Central Police station for a “full body search.”
Murray said that on arrival at CID, police searched their bag again.
“I don’t know what they were looking for, because up to now they gave no explanation,” she said.
“They took me to the toilet and asked me to take down my pants and my panty and squat and cough. I told the lady, I say, I just got my period on the boat and I don’t have any pad on or anything and if my skin messes up how I supposed to go home? She tells me they will give me toilet paper to clean up,” she said.
Murray said she was reluctant to comply because of the condition she was in but after a while, she gave in. She said that after she squatted and coughed twice, the police searched her upper body but they found nothing.
Murray said that she would not mind if the officers had told her what they were looking for and if she did not have her menstrual cycle. She said she intended to go seek legal advice on the matter.
The main problem for me is that they did not give an explanation why I was being searched. A whole boatload of people came up. Why me? That is what I want to know.