BY BRIGITTE GROUIX
TORONTO - The Canadian Broadcast Corporation program "The Fifth Estate" aired part of a 90-minute video February 22 that shocked many working people across Canada. It documented a brutal assault and strip search of female inmates at the Kingston Prison for Women in April 1994.

The video shows male members of the riot squad, armed with truncheons, going through the cells of female inmates and rousing them from sleep. The cops then ripped off the women's clothing, searched them, shackled them, and forced them to kneel and parade nude.

A Corrections Canada report released last month cleared the squad of any wrongdoing. "The men did their job the way they were supposed to," said prison warden Therese LeBlanc, who co-authored the report. "The procedures were followed." Prison officials said that the emergency response team was called in after four days of unrest in which inmates yelled obscenities, set fires, threw urine at guards, and stabbed one guard with a needle.

In an interview with the Toronto Sun, inmate Brenda Morrison said the emergency response team "treated us horribly. They left us naked and shackled in the cell and opened all the windows, and left us like this for 24 hours."

One inmate reported that the trouble started when a prison guard told a native woman, "Why don't you string yourselves up like the rest of them?" The guard was referring to a rash of suicides by native women at the prison several years ago. But by the time the riot squad arrived, Morrison said, "we were singing powwow, native spiritual songs, trying to make ourselves happy."

After the riot squad did their dirty work, women had to sign a form consenting to a vaginal and rectal search before being allowed to shower. Six women were sent into isolation for 23 hours a day. All were kept there for at least six months. Others were transferred to the Kingston Penitentiary for men.

A new report authored by Correctional Investigator Ron Steward gave a more accurate view of the actions taken by Canada prison officials. It said, "The video-tape-shows a massive display of force-in the face of no resistance."

Steward added that the excessive force was intended to degrade and dehumanize the prisoners. He accused the Correctional Service of Canada of trying to whitewash the affair, calling its internal investigative report "at best incomplete, inconclusive and self serving." Steward recommended that the prisoners be compensated. Solicitor- General Herbert Gray has now ordered an independent investigation.  
 
 
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