AP News, October 5th, 2007
A woman says security workers forced her to remove her bra before she was allowed entry into a federal courthouse. "I was embarrassed and humiliated," Lori Plato said Wednesday. "I am a modest person and I know that I am not the first woman this has happened to."
Plato and her husband, Owen Plato, went to the U.S. District Courthouse in Coeur d'Alene on a civil matter on Sept. 20, she said. The couple was stunned with security workers with the U.S. Marshals Service asked her to remove her bra after the metal underwire supports set off a metal detector.
"I asked if I could go into the bathroom because they didn't have a privacy screen and no women security officers were available," Plato said. "They said, 'No.' I wasn't carrying a shank in my bra. If it's so dangerous, why did they give it back and let me put it on?"
Patrick McDonald, a U.S. Marshal in Boise, released a statement about the bra flap, saying "appropriate security protocols" were followed in the incident and that Plato was given "a number of options by the court security officers that would have ensured her privacy and enabled her entry into the courthouse. The individual, however, chose not to follow any of the options."
Security guards suggested that Plato simply remove the bra in her car outside, or find a restaurant bathroom, McDonald said. But Plato said she was parked on a busy street, and wasn't familiar with downtown Coeur d'Alene businesses. Instead, her husband held up his coat to shield her from the rest of the people in the courthouse lobby while Plato removed her bra underneath her shirt.
"The security didn't bat an eye," she said. "I put it on the security conveyor belt. One of the officers said, 'It's a girl.' It was mortifying."
McDonald acknowledged that security workers told Plato that she couldn't pass through security wearing the bra but said she wasn't ordered to remove it.
"She's inflating it," U.S. Marshal Patrick McDonald said. "All of a sudden she just took it off. It wasn't anything we wanted to happen and it wasn't anything we asked for her to do. She did it so fast."
McDonald said Plato is the first person he knows of who has been asked to remove a bra at the courthouse, but Plato maintains the Marshal's Service told her that other women have been asked to remove their brassieres to go through security.
Generally, McDonald said, undergarments aren't considered a danger to security.
"I don't think they're considered a weapon, really, the last time I looked," he said.
Still, he declined to discuss other ways the federal courthouse guards could have screened Plato for weapons.
"I don't want to get into security matters," he said.
Plato wants the Marshal's Service to apologize and stop forcing women to disrobe, she said.
"It was very humiliating," her husband, Owen Plato, said. "They could have handled it with a much more professional attitude. There should have been a privacy screen there at the very least."
