THREE INDIANA TEEN GIRLS SUE CITY OVER STRIP SEARCH

MADISON, Ind. - The high school girlfriends weren't known as troublemakers. One was a cheerleader, another a soccer player and the third grew up working on her family's farm.

But the Madison Consolidated High School seniors found themselves shivering on a winter night three years ago in a deserted church parking lot, surrounded by police, being questioned about drugs - and then strip searched.

"We were all so scared," one of them, Kristy Lessley, said in the first interview the women have granted since the incident Jan. 19, 2007. "We just froze."

The fear and embarrassment, however, soon turned to anger for Lessley and her friends, Kara Rhodehamel and Kayla Messer, who sued the city of Madison, former Mayor Albert Huntington, former City Attorney Robert Barlow, former Police Chief Robert Wolf, City Councilman James Lee and four police officers, claiming they were illegally strip-searched and confined.

Madison police have publicly denied any wrongdoing, but the individual defendants declined to comment except for Wolf, who has an unlisted phone number and could not be reached.

Current City Attorney Jason Pattison referred questions about the case to Timothy Born of Evansville, the lead counsel enlisted by the city's insurance company. Born did not respond to several e-mail and phone messages.

The case, pending in U.S. District Court in New Albany, was later expanded to include accusations that Wolf and others knowingly withheld key documents, destroyed evidence of police misconduct and generally stonewalled to protect themselves and officers.

Those claims prompted a federal judge to twice sanction and fine the defendant city and police representatives for interfering with discovery- penalties that Indiana University law professor Alex Tanford said are uncommon in such cases.

"Things have to be pretty bad" for a judge to impose sanctions and fines in the middle of a lawsuit, said Tanford, who was provided information about the case for an interview.

No trial date is currently set; a date set previously was postponed. The women are seeking unspecified damages and a jury trial.

Searches Curtailed

Numerous court cases have found strip searches to be humiliating violations of privacy, and as a result they are generally avoided except when police suspect an arrested person is concealing drugs or contraband.

Officials in Jefferson County, Ky., restricted jail strip searches after reaching an $11.5million settlement a decade ago to resolve a class-action lawsuit challenging such searches of inmates facing minor offenses. They now pat down inmates except where officers anticipate finding weapons or other hazards, spokeswoman Pam Windsor said.

Floyd and Harrison counties also resolved lawsuits involving strip searches at their jails, paying a total of $919,000 in separate settlements.

And five months after the Madison strip searches, Wolf revamped police procedures for transporting prisoners to say there would be no strip searches. Previously, there had been no written policy about searches of any kind.

The Madison incident occurred when the three women - then 18 and 19 - were headed home in Rhodehamel's Toyota Camry. Police Sgt. Donald James Royce and Officers Jonathan Simpson and Christopher Strouse surrounded the car and began questioning them, according to police reports.

Two more officers - Mika Season Jackson and William Watterson - arrived moments later. The suit contends that police provided conflicting accounts afterward about whether the teens were read their rights or consented to searches of the car and their purses.

Although the officers reported finding bits of marijuana in the car, the suit claims none was ever placed into evidence. Their reports indicated they asked questions after smelling an odor of pot in the car.

Royce placed all three women in his cruiser and drove them to a nearby fire station, where Jackson - the only woman officer involved in the case - brought each one separately into a restroom. She ordered each to strip to panties and bra, pull out their bra cups and pull their underpants below their knees and squat to allow her to look at the vaginal area. Jackson recounted that procedure in her deposition.

Police reported recovering a small bag of marijuana from Lessley, for which she was arrested and charged with misdemeanor possession under 30 grams.

Jefferson County, Ind., Prosecutor Chad Lewis later dismissed the charge because of concerns about the search. The other two women were released to drive home after the search and were not charged.

Document Problems

In some respects, the cover-up allegation in the women's lawsuit, including falsifying and withholding documents, has overshadowed the basic complaint about the strip searches.

One issue involved a page from Royce's personnel file that was provided to Joseph Colussi, the women's attorney, showing a blank space about an inch deep at the top. Colussi discovered that when Royce sent him the same page, someone had removed a paragraph that said officials met with Wolf to discuss Royce's conduct, contradicting previous representations by the city that they hadn't met to discuss the matter, according to court records.

In an interview, Colussi said the city attempted to remove evidence about the officials' involvement and that he reported the matter to the court. No one from the city, the police or their legal team offered an explanation for why the documents didn't match, he said.

Colussi also has raised concerns about other police records kept by the city and by Wolf, who admitted during a deposition that he kept two files on officers - a personnel file and a separate "personal" file on disciplinary matters that he admitted moving to his home when he retired in late 2007, according to court records.

And after police and city officials represented they had provided everything requested by a February 2008 deadline, they produced more than 3,000 additional pages from Wolf, Barlow and Huntington in three batches delivered months later, court records show.

In October 2008, U.S. District Judge David Hamilton sanctioned the city for failing to release relevant documents. And the judge entered a second sanction later for additional discovery breaches, ordering the city to pay Colussi's costs to retake depositions of key officials.

The court is still considering the women's request to hold Madison officials personally liable for their conduct, a motion the city's lawyers have opposed.

None of the police officers, meantime, were charged criminally as a result of the strip search, although court records show that Lewis investigated an unrelated 2004 sexual battery allegation against Royce but declined to file charges.

'Some Sort Of Stop'

Since the strip-search incident, two officers have quit. Royce left in July 2007 and now works in Belterra Casino's marketing department. Strouse joined the Indiana Excise Police. Jackson and Simpson have remained with the department. Strouse and Jackson did not return phone messages while Simpson declined to comment.

The litigation has stalled while a new judge who was appointed to the case gets up to speed. Hamilton was nominated by President Barack Obama to the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Chicago.

In the interview, Messer, Rhodehamel and Lessley said they've mostly moved on with their lives but still wonder what they might have done to prevent what happened. And they said they're determined to make sure nothing like it ever happens again.

"I just want there to be consequences," Messer said.

"We were blind to the thought that they (police) would do anything wrong to us," Lessley said. "These were people we looked up to."

The incident opened their eyes about trusting authority, they said.

"I really want people to understand that this could happen to anyone," Rhodehamel said. "There needs to be some sort of stop to it."