In­dar­jit Seu­raj

The State yes­ter­day ad­mit­ted it had no de­fence to a law­suit brought by a Va­len­cia woman, who was stripped and searched in full view of mo­torists dur­ing a road­block ex­er­cise more than nine years ago. Jus­tice Se­bas­t­ian Ven­tour will rule in a sub­se­quent hear­ing on the quan­tum of dam­ages to be award­ed to Clothil­da Madoo. As he en­tered a de­fault judg­ment in favour of the claimant yes­ter­day, Ven­tour was crit­i­cal of the con­duct of the po­lice, de­scrib­ing the in­ci­dent as "very dis­turb­ing." Jus­tice Ven­tour, who heard the facts of the case for the first time yes­ter­day, lis­tened in dis­be­lief.

He asked: "All her clothes ex­cept her brassiere? At 10.30 in the morn­ing? All her clothes, Mr (Neil) Byam? And the State is not de­fend­ing?" The vic­tim, 51, a moth­er of nine, of 156 Va­len­cia Old Road, Va­len­cia, was ar­rest­ed on Jan­u­ary 4, 2001, and tak­en to a road­block at the junc­tion of Va­len­cia Old Road and To­co Main Road, where she was or­dered to strip down to her bra. Lawyers rep­re­sent­ing the State con­ced­ed they could not de­fend the law­suit for un­law­ful ar­rest and as­sault filed by at­tor­neys for Madoo – Ravi Heffes-Doon and Kern Saney. The State had ini­tial­ly claimed that the al­leged in­ci­dent nev­er took place. How­ev­er, State coun­sel Neil Byam in­formed the judge that po­lice of­fi­cers who gave state­ments in the mat­ter had not re­turned to sign them, ef­fec­tive­ly ren­der­ing the state­ments in­ad­mis­si­ble for the de­fence.

Ven­tour was ap­palled and sought an­swers for the ac­tions of the po­lice of­fi­cers in­volved. "It's un­be­liev­able. How can this be?" he asked. "I can't be­lieve this Mr Byam, I re­al­ly can't. It is hor­ren­dous." He said the of­fi­cers com­mit­ted acts which were "un­law­ful" and didn't both­er to sign state­ments they had giv­en. "I have to say this from the bench, they are play­ing the fool," he said. Jus­tice Ven­tour asked whether the of­fi­cers' re­luc­tance to sign these state­ments had been re­port­ed to the rel­e­vant au­thor­i­ties. "Did you write to the Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice about this?" he asked the State at­tor­ney. Byam said he had not. On the day of the in­ci­dent, Madoo was ac­com­pa­ny­ing her com­mon-law hus­band, Christo­pher Sorzano, on a vis­it to a rel­a­tive in Ve­ga, San­gre Grande. When they were near the road­block, Sorzano stopped his Maz­da 626 turned back for home. With­in min­utes, po­lice of­fi­cers ar­rived to their home and lit­er­al­ly dragged Madoo back to the road­block area.There, she was told to strip and was left with on­ly her brassiere on. The of­fi­cer said that was on­ly be­cause it was "see through."

Af­ter­wards, the of­fi­cer in­struct­ed her to squat. Dur­ing this time, mo­torists drove slow­ly past the road­block and saw the naked woman. In her state­ment to her at­tor­neys, Madoo said she felt "very em­bar­rassed, dis­graced and hu­mil­i­at­ed" at the way she was searched by the of­fi­cers. To make mat­ters worse, when she was re­leased from the San­gre Grande Po­lice Sta­tion lat­er that day, one of the po­lice of­fi­cers told her to wear bet­ter un­der­wear. At that time, Madoo was 41-years-old and earned her liv­ing by hum­ble means as a gar­den­er. Ven­tour or­dered that writ­ten sub­mis­sions on the award of dam­ages be sub­mit­ted by the claimant, no lat­er that Jan­u­ary 7. The State was or­dered to re­spond by Jan­u­ary 14.