NSW government loses music festival strip search case as woman awarded $93,000 in damages

The state government has lost a landmark case involving the illegal strip search of a woman by NSW Police at a music festival in 2018.

Transcript

00:00Rhea Meredith led a class action involving more than 3,000 people who'd been strip searched by

00:07New South Wales police at music festivals between 2016 and 2022. Now earlier this year the state

00:14of New South Wales made an astounding backflip in this case conceding that police had acted

00:19unlawfully when they conducted an invasive strip search on Miss Meredith at the Splendour in the

00:24Grass Music Festival in Byron Bay in 2016. That strip search involved asking her to bend over while

00:30naked and remove a tampon. Now in handing down her judgment today Justice Yahia said it was

00:36confounding that New South Wales police had still not apologised to Miss Meredith despite conceding

00:41the search was unlawful. She found that there was no reasonable grounds for it to be conducted and

00:47there was no urgency or sense of danger which warranted the search in the first place. The

00:52judge described this as a flagrant disregard for Miss Meredith's rights and a gross failure to pay

00:58any regard to the safeguards that are supposed to be in place around strip searches. She ordered police

01:04pay Miss Meredith a total of $93,000 in compensation and aggravated damages for assault, battery and false

01:12imprisonment as well as for the way that they had conducted themselves during this legal case. The

01:17judge reserved a decision on how much exemplary damages should have to be paid. Now that's

01:22an additional amount of damages that is meant as a deterrent for the fact that senior police had

01:28failed to ensure that officers were properly trained in strip searches. However the legal team

01:33behind this class action has today urged the New South Wales Police and the State Government to come

01:38to the table and settle with the other claimants whose claims are yet to be heard. Message from this case

01:43is police get your hands off young people and children's bodies. It is their body, it is their property, get out of the way.

01:54The government did not stand up for them, they stood up for themselves. The courage of the lead

02:00plaintiff, Raya, took us forward in this class action and now we have a definitive judgment that says

02:07potentially that thousands of strip searches conducted by police are unlawful. It's unclear what the final

02:15damages bill will be from this landmark case but it is clear that it could run into the tens of millions

02:21of dollars.

02:28you