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| Woman Says Strip-Search Left Her Devastated |
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Posted by FoM on August 15, 2001 at 09:11:48 PT By Steve Warmbir, Federal Courts Reporter Source: Chicago Sun-Times 
A former Chicago woman wiped away tears in federal court Tuesday as she testified how she was humiliated by smirking customs agents who strip-searched her for illegal drugs.Kathryn Kaniff, 36, told jurors how the two female agents told her to bend over in an examination room, her pants and underwear already down. Bend lower, she was told. Agents wanted to see whether she had any illegal drugs stashed inside her. She didn't. ''I was just so embarrassed,'' Kaniff said. ''I started apologizing to the girls, and to this day, I don't know why I was apologizing after what they did to me.'' Kaniff was pulled over for the search after returning from a 1997 vacation to Jamaica through O'Hare Airport. She's suing the government for $2 million. It's a search the government calls legitimate. Agents found no drugs during the strip-search, but that didn't stop them from handcuffing Kaniff, trotting her through the O'Hare terminal, taking her to Resurrection Hospital and having her X-rayed. But first, she had to give a urine specimen in front of agents for a pregnancy test before the X-ray. Again, no drugs. The search upended her life, Kaniff told jurors. At night, memories of the probe troubled her sleep, she said. Paranoia plagued her waking hours. New acne streaked her cheeks. And her career fizzled along with her love life as her energy dwindled, she said. Soon after the strip-search, she felt shut down during a family trip to Ireland. She couldn't even enjoy the beauty of the Irish countryside, she said. A psychiatrist has diagnosed her with post-traumatic stress disorder. Government attorneys argue the strip-search was grounded in reasonable suspicion. Kaniff was returning from Jamaica, a known drug-supplying country, after a reasonably short stay, had paid $600 cash for her ticket and didn't know the exact address of the person who was picking her up at the airport, government attorneys argue. On Tuesday, they got Kaniff to admit that at one time, even before the strip-search, she suffered from some of the same problems she described in court. Kaniff also acknowledged telling a therapist she was ''constantly stoned'' on marijuana for part of her teen years. But Kaniff didn't smoke any marijuana while in Jamaica in 1997, she said. Source: Chicago Sun-Times (IL) CannabisNews Justice Archives Home Comment Email Register Recent Comments Help |
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| Comment #4 posted by FoM on August 15, 2001 at 15:03:04 PT |
| If something like that happened to me I would never be the same. I don't understand how they can do that to people. I really can't. [ Post Comment ] |
| Comment #3 posted by meagain on August 15, 2001 at 14:57:32 PT |
| These people "get off" on searching people like this. There is no other explanation. Call it legalized perversion. You could not pay me to do this to my fellow people. [ Post Comment ] |
| Comment #2 posted by schmeff on August 15, 2001 at 14:39:31 PT |
| Justice would best be served if George W. Bush is held at gunpoint, irradiated against his will and has his ass probed the next time he makes an overseas junket. It would be entirely justified: he's coming from a drug-supplying nation, his airfair was stolen from the American taxpayer, and he doesn't even know his own address, let alone those of the people picking him up. Authorities in the above story came up empty-handed, but we can be pretty sure that a probe of the Executive Orfice would discover the head of George W. Bush. [ Post Comment ] |
| Comment #1 posted by E. Johnson on August 15, 2001 at 10:35:52 PT |
| It was supposedly necessary for public safety for people in the USSR not to have any right to complaim about their treatment by law enforcement. The same aggressive ugly smirking bastards worked there as work here. It's just the uniforms and language are different. These drug police imagine themselves as heroes, and so did the KGB. They have personality disease that they catch from an overly large bureacracy that rewards the worst personality traits possible. Forget Marx -- Communist repression was at its heart a disease of pure human ugliness independent of politcal ideology. The same ugliness is in the heart of everyone, waiting for the right kind of political situation to allow it to emerge and become strong and dominant. Now we are dominated by this same kind of ugly people. How long will it take us to set ourselves free from them? [ Post Comment ] |
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