Girl forcibly stripped by male guards in young offenders’ prison
A GIRL held in a young offenders’ institution was pinned down and forcibly stripped by a group of male prison guards, according to a watchdog.
Charlie Taylor, the Chief Inspector of Prisons, said he was “deeply shocked” at the findings, which revealed the
“incredibly vulnerable” child prisoner had been restrained and had her clothes removed by “multiple men” on two occasions at Young Offender Institution (YOI) Wetherby in West Yorkshire.
Holding some of the most “challenging” children in the country, the watchdog likened the “complex group” of youngsters behind bars there to the equivalent of being as dangerous as men in category A adult jails.
Nearly half of the children at Wetherby had been in council care and the site has the “highest rate of self-harm of any prison in the country”, with officers often having to intervene “multiple times at night” to stop girls trying to harm themselves, inspectors said.
Mr Taylor said: “We were deeply shocked to find adult male officers restraining and stripping an incredibly vulnerable girl not once but twice.
“While they no doubt acted to prevent serious harm, the presence of multiple men pinning her down and removing her clothes will have caused further trauma and, given how predictable the behaviour of this girl was, the YOI has no excuse not to have made sure female officers were in attendance.”
During the inspection, carried out in November and December last year, wider concerns about the extent of strip-searches against children while being restrained were also raised.
Some 24 children were stripsearched in the past 12 months, with half of them taking place while they were being held down.
Although prison bosses had recorded the decision to carry out a strip-search, “none had recorded the authority to use restraint”, according to the findings.
The Ministry of Justice has been contacted for comment.