LAWNDALE : 2 School Aides Suspended Over Alleged Strip Searches

Two Lawndale school aides have been suspended with pay pending an investigation into complaints by four seventh-grade boys that they were strip-searched on a field trip when a teacher complained that she was missing $400.

Lawndale Elementary School District Supt. Joseph Condon said Tuesday that school officials, the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department and the child abuse section of the Department of Children’s Services were investigating. The names of the aides were not released.

The boys were among 16 students, a teacher and two aides from Will Rogers Intermediate School who went on a shopping trip Monday to the South Bay Galleria in Redondo Beach, Condon said.

One of the students, a 13-year-old boy, said that when the teacher realized she was missing the money, the aides organized a search. One of the male aides took the four boys into a small room at the mall “where he made us take our clothes off,” the youth said.

The money was not found.

Condon said the other aide, a woman, was suspended because she improperly searched the belongings of seven girls, although there has been no report that those students were forced to remove their clothing.