When Marlon realised his daughter was being groomed and sexually exploited by grown men, he engaged with police, doing everything he could to keep his 14-year-old child safe.
But one day, the police, who Marlon thought would protect his daughter, added to her trauma - when she was strip searched by officers after being accused of concealing an E-cigarette.
"For a child who has been groomed and then taken to a police station to be strip searched is just massively inappropriate, its appalling," says Marlon.
He claims by the time he got to the police station, his daughter had already been asked to strip down to her underwear. The search was conducted by female officers in front of a glass door, says Marlon, meaning she was also visible to male officers.
"When I found out she had been stripped and searched and was so distressed about it, I was furious," Marlon says.
"Children shouldn't be stripped and searched at all."
It is a viewpoint echoed by campaigners who took to the streets in 2020 to protest, after reports that a 15-year-old black girl was stripped and searched at school and whilst on her period.
It was the case of Child Q which prompted the children's commissioner to conduct a report into the issue.
Data from the findings show that a child is strip searched every 14 hours, with police failing to record an appropriate adult in almost half of recent searches.
The report shows there were 3,368 strip searches of children between January 2018 and June 2023 in England and Wales - with 457 over the last 12 months of that period.
Between July 2022 and June 2023, an appropriate adult - usually a parent or guardian - could not be confirmed present in 39% of searches, while none was present in 6% of cases.
Black children are four times more likely to be searched, a slight change from the period covering 2018-22 when they were six times more likely.
Dame Rachel de Souza, who commissioned the report, says the figures are still "deeply concerning".
She says strip searches are regularly occurring before an arrest, saying many are "taken off the street and stripped searched under suspicion".
Given the Metropolitan Police has halved the amount of child strip searches it conducts, Dame Rachel says other forces can do the same.
"It shows that if a police commissioner decides to do it they can make a difference here," she says.
Lynn Frusher works as an appropriate adult, supporting children in custody whose parents are not present. In more than a decade in the role, she says she has seen hundreds of strip searches conducted.
"These are children, the criminal age of responsibility is 10, that's primary school," says Ms Frusher.
"To be put into that situation without somebody there to support you and make sure things are done correctly when you don't know what the correct procedure is, it's invaluable. You must have an appropriate adult there," she adds.
Disclaimer: The copyright of this article belongs to the original author. Reposting this article is solely for the purpose of information dissemination and does not constitute any investment advice. If there is any infringement, please contact us immediately. We will make corrections or deletions as necessary. Thank you.
