Strip Searches

At some point, it became official Valley of the Moon Children’s Home policy to strip search every child who entered the facility.  Strip searches have been confirmed stretching back to 1995. Searches were performed by non-medical staff under the guise of identifying injuries. Staff were ordered to check children’s genitals, breasts, and buttock areas of every child entering Valley of the Moon Children’s Home upon removal of their family of origin.

Strip searches occurred in different rooms in the facility, including the shower, bedrooms, and bathrooms. The non-medical searches were called by numerous names including observation checklist searches, intake searches, and bruise searches.

Searches to check for injuries and undetected abuses should have been completed by medical professionals, in a medical setting. Subjecting children to strip searches send the message that children have no bodily autonomy, staff had the right to inspect every inch of their person whenever staff felt it necessary, and they were powerless to stop it.

Strip searching children was approved by Community Care Licensing in its program statement. Community Care Licensing approved strip searching in either the 2001 program statement or in the revised program statement in 2005. Since we have been able to confirm the abuses by child accounts all the way back to 1995, we believe it is reasonable to conclude it was contained in the 2001 program statement submission.

Non-medical staff strip searches of all children entering Valley of the Moon Children’s Home was facility’s official policy until 2013. A complaint by Foster Change Coalition forced an end to the strip search policy.

Community Care Licensing staff spoke with children in the home and none of the children revealed being subjected to sexually assault by strip search. No former residents were contacted. Valley of the Moon Children’s Home asserted that they stopped strip searching prior to the complaint.

Community Care Licensing cited Valley of the Moon Children’s Home for the policy they approved and for working off the terms of their license by changing the intake procedure without asking for permission.

A victim of sexual assault at Valley of the Moon Children’s Home contacted Community Care Licensing but was never interviewed by anyone at Community Care Licensing. Had Community Care Licensing contacted the resident, they would have learned the victim was subjected to exactly this brand of sexual abuse. Just minutes after being admitted into Valley of the Moon Children’s Home, a staff demanded the resident take a shower. Once naked in the shower, the staff demanded that the resident open the shower curtain during a shower to “check for bruises”. The former resident reports still having nightmares about this and other abuses experienced or witnessed while at Valley of the Moon Children’s Home.

State and federal courts concluded such strip searches are gross violations of children’s rights to be free of abuse and Fourth Amendment right to be free of unreasonable searches.[1] There are four important cases to note.

Darryl H. v. Coler in 1986, mentioned earlier regarding Marian. [2]

Eddings v. Oklahoma in 1982:

“That plaintiffs are children under the age of eighteen is also a factor we must consider. Children are especially susceptible to possible traumas from strip searches. As the Supreme Court has noted, '[y]outh is more than a chronological fact. It is a time and condition of life when a person may be most susceptible to influence and to psychological damage.'" [3]

Doe v. Renfroe in 1981:

“It follows that a nude search of a child is an invasion of constitutional rights of some magnitude.” “Violations of a person's 'cherished personal security,' _ whether engaged in by violent antisocial elements of our society or by overzealous, insensitive police, must be equally condemned. Both should be dealt with in accordance with legal consequences that foster deterrence.”[4]

Franz v. Lytle in 1993:

The police conducted strip searches of a child to check for child abuse injuries. The Court refused to allow strip searches because the searches would be to “balkanize the Fourth Amendment” even if they were performed to out of concern for the children.[5]

The courts have repeatedly called strip searches of people by social service staff a violation of their dignity, a humiliation, and a violation of their Fourth Amendment right. We assert it is sexual abuse. While staff may not have wanted to have sex with the children, the strip search policy of rape victims and assault victims was created sexual terror in the children which was used to coerce their compliance. It is not clear if this was the initial intent of the policy, but it was exploited to that end. In the minds of both the staff and the children; staff have an absolute right to demand nakedness of the children at anytime and children are not free to say no without consequence.

We do not know how many children were sexually assaulted in this way but we estimate that the number is probably in the thousands.

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[1] See strip search section at the end of this document for supporting court cases.

[2] 801 F.2d 893 (7th Cir. 1986)

[3] (455 U.S. 104, 115, 102 S.Ct. 869, 877, 71 L.Ed.2d 1 (1982)) Thank you to San Diego Foster Children Subject to “Body Check”, Bill Grimm, National Center for Youth Law

[4] 631 F.2d 91, 92-93 (7th Cir.1980), cert. denied, 451 U.S. 1022, 101 S.Ct. 3015, 69 L.Ed.2d 395 (1981) Thank you to San Diego Foster Children Subject to “Body Check”, Bill Grimm, National Center for Youth Law

[5] 997 F.2d 784 (10th Cir. 1993) Thank you to San Diego Foster Children Subject to “Body Check”, Bill Grimm, National Center for Youth Law