Many students experience intimate moments in a high school building, however, few are with a sheriff’s office.
According to a new class action lawsuit, students allege that the Worth County Sheriff’s Office conducted a warrantless drug search on around 900 students at a Georgia high school in April that discovered no drugs, yet involved a lot of inappropriate touching looking for them. The Southern Center for Human Rights helped nine students from Worth County High School file a lawsuit against Worth County Sheriff Jeff Hobby and other deputies after they intrusively searched almost every student.
The students say that officers violated their Fourth and Fourteenth Amendment rights, as well as Georgia’s State Constitution, during the early morning searches.
Detailed in the lawsuit, students were “confined either to their first-period classrooms, to the hallways immediately outside their classrooms, or to the gym.” Their “cell phones were seized so that they could not reach their parents,” and some students were denied restroom access for the four-hour lockdown period.
The lawsuit described that deputies “touched and manipulated students’ breasts and genitals,” “inserted fingers inside girls’ bras, and pulled up girls’ bras, touching and partially exposing their bare breasts,” “touched girls’ underwear by placing hands inside the waistbands of their pants or reaching up their dresses,” “touched girls’ vaginal areas through their underwear,” and “cupped or groped boys’ genitals and touched their buttocks through their pants.”
The suit describes Deputy Brandi Whiddon’s search of an 18-year-old plaintiff that included “rubb[ing] her hands from K.P.’s waist up to her breasts and squeez[ing] her breasts five times through her shirt. She moved the front center of K.P.’s bra left and right, and then lifted the underwire of her bra so that it was sitting above her bare breasts. Whiddon then groped her breasts twice through her shirt. Next, she put her hands into K.P.’s jeans pockets, at an angle towards her groin area. Through the pockets, her fingertips went under K.P.’s underwear and touched her vaginal area.”
The suit claims another deputy searched a 16-year-old plaintiff, and “spent over ten seconds using his fingers to cup and grope D.J.’s penis and testicles through his pants.”
Worth County Sheriff Jeff Hobby told WALB News 10 that the searches were legal — though warrantless — because school administers were present.
Although Hobby informed the Worth County High School administration of a planned drug raid in March, the sheriff did not explain the extent nor the obtrusiveness of the raid.
Hobby planned the raid after arresting juveniles in connection with a burglary, and found evidence of drug activity at the school, he told WALB. Hobby orchestrated the raid targeting 13 students, only three whom attended school the day of the raid. They searched nearly every student at the school.
“Under no circumstances did we approve touching any students,” Interim Worth County Superintendent Lawrence Walters told local media. “I’ve never been involved with anything like that ever in the past 21 years and I don’t condone it.”
The Sylvester Police Department’s search of the school a month earlier also came up empty.
The lawsuit was filed June 1, and the sheriff’s formal response must be filed within 60 days. The suit seeks unspecified damages.
