Canada: Woman Humiliated During Airport Strip Search
July 22nd, 2010Via: Toronto Sun:
Shileen Flynn, 29, had already missed one flight and lost her luggage when she says she found herself in a room at the Vancouver airport, naked and squatting, while two crude border agents strip-searched her.
…
Flynn — a frequent traveller who has been strip-searched twice before — said this time was different. She said the women made her bend over a table, open her legs, and squat and cough. They asked her personal questions, like when she last had sex, Flynn said.
She fought back tears throughout the ordeal.
“I thought, if I start crying, they’re gonna think I’m guilty,” she said.
“As soon as they finished the strip search, I started bawling.”
One guard told her if she didn’t stop crying, she’d be detained, Flynn said. When she explained why she was crying, Flynn said a guard piped up: “How do you think I feel? I just had lunch. You make me feel sick.”
“It’s the most embarrassing thing that’s ever happened to me in my life,” said Flynn, who cried the whole way to Frankfurt. “It was totally demeaning and degrading. … I’ve done nothing wrong. Absolutely nothing wrong.”
As soon as she got to Spain, she called her father, Charlie Flynn, who reported what happened to CBSA.
CBSA launched an internal investigation, interviewing Shileen and the officers involved.
After months of back and forth, Charlie received a letter from CBSA that read: “We have fully investigated the incident and concluded that the BSOs involved in examination of your daughter followed established guidelines and conducted themselves in a professional manner.”
These thugs just do not care. What will hit home is when large numbers of current air travelers start curtailing their use of commercial air travel. The airlines will cry “uncle” and things will being to change. Money talks but the lack of it SCREAMS!
This is disgusting, shocking, and pisses me off.
Amazing that this is Vancouver,CA, NOT USA.
I’ve been through some pretty insane searches since 9/11 but nothing like this. Thank the god/dess I’m not flying like I used to for work related travel. Had a woman pick through a container of homegrown berries I was taking to family; had my breasts and crotch felt up, but yoi, nothing like this!
Have learned: do not wear an underwire bra. Put a pair of socks in your carry on to put over your feet when you have to go through the metal detector and across a floor covered with the dead skin and DNA of thousands.
Other than that, I figure when you are a target for a search, maybe cause people are having a bad day at the office, you are on your own.