Cadets Violently Strip Searched Us as Part of Their Training. For My Pain, I Got a Measly $325.

[Nevilledog]

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The Marshall Project
@MarshallProj
Willette Benford was one of several incarcerated women who sued the Illinois corrections department for using mass strip searches to train cadets. A small settlement check took her back to the shame and trauma of those incidents.

Cadets Violently Strip Searched Us as Part of Their Training. For My Pain, I Got a Measly $325.
Willette Benford was one of several incarcerated women who sued the Illinois corrections department for using mass strip searches to train cadets. A small settlement check took her back to the shame...
themarshallproject.org
9:17 AM · May 7, 2021

https://www.themarshallproject.org/2021/05/06/cadets-violently-strip-searched-us-as-part-of-their-training-for-my-pain-i-got-a-measly-325

On Feb. 6, 2021, I received a check in the mail. Like most people, I like getting checks. But this one, a settlement payment from the Illinois Department of Corrections (IDOC), was different. There was no joy attached to its delivery — only dark memories of the violent, degrading strip search that I and hundreds of other women endured as part of a cadet training exercise at Logan Correctional Center.

The search took place on the morning of Oct. 31, 2013. To this day, I believe the choice of Halloween was intentional. Fear gripped my heart as male and female guards, cadets and staff screamed at us to get up and get dressed and threatened us with solitary confinement if we said a word. The cadets were being trained on how to shake down prisoners — and how to treat us in general.

As we stood in front of our cells, female cadets made us strip naked; male officers were present. We stood there as various other men who weren’t on staff walked up and down the hallways watching us.

Some of us had to remove sanitary products right there in front of them. The female cadets patted us down, lifted our breasts and forced us to spread our buttocks so that they could look inside us with flashlights. Then, as we squatted and coughed, they handcuffed us. They led us to the dayroom to sit for hours until their mock shakedown was complete. Some officers joked around while we sat there. Eventually, we were allowed to put our clothes back on, but we were still in view of male officers and cadets.

Just retelling this story brings back the trauma of an event I thought I could somehow forget. But how could I forget when the same thing had happened two years prior?

*snip*

[CrispyQ]

1. I have no words. -nt

[marble falls]

2. They should use prison employees for this training.