Paul Bibby
It was one of the most infamous incidents in the history of Splendour in the Grass – a young woman who had recently given birth was unlawfully and invasively strip searched simply because a drug dog took a brief interest in her person.
Now, seven years later, Raya Meredith has been awarded $93,000 in the NSW Supreme Court for battery, assault, and false imprisonment.
And hundreds of others who were strip searched at Splendour and other festivals across the state may also be entitled to damages.
The case, one of the largest class actions involving police in Australian history, concluded on September 30 when NSW Supreme Court Justice Dina Yehia found in favour of the plaintiff.
In a stinging judgment, Justice Yehia found that there had been a ‘flagrant’ disregard of Ms Meredith’s rights and a ‘gross failure’ to comply with legal safeguards during the search.
Justice Yehia also found that the training and supervision of the officers in question and others across the state had been ‘wholly inadequate’ when it came to lawfully conducting strip searches.
Police concede unlawful strip search
Crucially for the many hundreds of other members of the class action, Justice Yehia also found that mere indications from police drug dogs are insufficient to justify a strip search.
‘Ultimately, I have concluded that the conduct of searching police not only constituted an unlawful strip search of the plaintiff (as conceded by the defendant) but amounted to a gross failure to comply with the requirements and safeguards of LEPRA [the Law Enforcement (Powers and Responsibilities) Act 2000],’ Justice Yehia said.
‘Furthermore, these failures to lawfully exercise the relevant powers, were a product of a conspicuous deficiency in the training, education, and monitoring of police officers in the exercise of their powers to conduct a strip search, resulting in a flagrant disregard of the rights of the plaintiff.
‘These failures are compounded by the fact that senior officers were authorising, organising, and planning drug detection operations at music festivals as a matter of routine, which clearly included the strip searching of attendees.’
When is a strip search allowed?
The class action includes those who have attended a music festival within NSW on, or from, July 2016 to 2022 and were stopped and strip searched on the basis that they were suspected of having drugs.
In an interview with Mia Armitage to be aired on BayFM this week, Tracey Randall of Randall Legal in Lismore describes strip searches as ‘a huge invasion of privacy of the citizen’ and provides some clarity around the circumstances in which such searches are allowed.
‘To conduct a strip search, the officer must conduct the least invasive kind of strip search possible,’ says Ms Randall, who has previously had a client who sued NSW Police over an unlawful strip search at Splendour in the Grass.
‘They must not search the genital area unless there’s a reasonable suspicion that it’s necessary for the purposes of the search, a strip search must not involve the removal of more clothing than is reasonably necessary to conduct the search, and it must not involve a visual inspection of the body unless it’s necessary for the conduct of the search.’
‘So all of those things… were not complied with in these searches that were occurring, particularly at the 2018 Splendour festival.
‘As a matter of course, people were frog-marched in, told to take off their clothing, squat visual inspections were occurring without the officers turning their mind to whether that was necessary for the search.’
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