DATE: Tuesday, March 25, 1997               TAG: 9703250273

SECTION: LOCAL                   PAGE: B1   EDITION: FINAL 

SOURCE: BY MARC DAVIS, STAFF WRITER

DATELINE: VIRGINIA BEACH                    LENGTH:   77 lines

2 GIRLS, FORCED TO STRIP IN SEARCH AT BEACH SCHOOL, SETTLE LAWSUIT FOR $75,000

Two teen-age girls who were forced to strip to their underwear during a school search for stolen money in 1992 will split $75,000 to settle their lawsuit against the assistant principal who conducted the searches.

The money - $50,000 for one girl, $25,000 for the other - will come from the public school system's insurance.

The settlement applies only to then-Assistant Principal Flora M. Haynie, not to then-Superintendent Sidney L. Faucette or the School Board. Faucette and the board were co-defendants in the 1996 lawsuit, but both were dropped earlier this month.

The trial against Haynie was scheduled to start Monday. The settlement order was filed Friday.

The lawsuit accused Haynie of conducting illegal searches on four girls at Great Neck Junior High School on April 27, 1992. The girls were suspected of stealing $92 from a fellow student's gym locker.

During the search, Haynie ordered the girls to remove their shoes and socks. Then she took each girl into a bathroom and ordered the student to lift her shirt and drop her pants in front of Haynie and a teacher's assistant. No money was found.

Two girls - one 13, one 14 at the time of the searches - sued in federal court in January 1996. They are now 18 and 19. The two other girls did not sue.

On Monday, Haynie said she didnot approve the out-of-court settlement and wanted the case to go to trial. Her attorney, Archibald Wallace III of Richmond, said he settled the case at the request of the school system or the insurance company. He was not sure which. Haynie said the lawyer settled the case because it would have cost more to go to trial.

Haynie said she did nothing wrong. She said she had reason to believe the four girls were in the locker room, or near it, when the money was stolen.

School policy bans strip searches, and Haynie denied that her actions constituted a strip search. She said she asked the girls to drop their pants and open their shirts to see if they had hidden the stolen money in their bras or panties. She did not touch the girls.

``I did not strip-search them. At all times the private parts of their bodies were covered,'' Haynie said. It would be a strip search, Haynie said, if the girls had been naked.

Andrew M. Sacks, the girls' attorney, disagreed. When a government official, such as an assistant principal, orders a girl to remove her clothes, that's a strip search and it is unconstitutional, Sacks said.

``There is no reasonable contention by any reasonable person that that's not a strip search. No one other than Mrs. Haynie seems to have the definition that Mrs. Haynie has,'' Sacks said.

One girl who sued underwent ``fairly extensive psychological counseling'' after the searches, Sacks said last year. The other girl did not. He denounced the searches as ``one of the most demeaning and intrusive violations of someone's personal privacy that I could think of.''

Soon after the searches, the school superintendent condemned Haynie's actions and reprimanded her. ``I don't expect this kind of thing to happen and I won't tolerate it,'' Faucette said at the time. Faucette left the school system in 1995.

An arbitrator recommended that Haynie not be fired for this incident and others. Five months later, however, in September 1992, the School Board fired Haynie, citing ``an ongoing pattern of misjudgment'' culminating in the searches.

She later worked 2 1/2 years as a deputy commissioner for the city's commissioner of the revenue, then retired two years ago at age 56.

On Monday, Haynie said she was a victim of school politics. She said Faucette had her fired because she supported his predecessor, former Superintendent E. Carlton Bowyer.

``She was made the political football,'' said her attorney, Wallace. ``She's more victim than anyone in this case.'' Wallace said an unbiased jury would have ruled for Haynie if the case had gone to trial.

Sacks, however, said, ``Mrs. Haynie was discharged by the School Board based on the unconstitutional search in this case and other things.'' He called the searches ``extreme'' and ``abusive.''

``We expect there will be no more strip searches in the schools of Tidewater,'' Sacks said. KEYWORDS: VIRGINIA BEACH SCHOOLS SETTLEMENT LAWSUIT STRIP

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