HASSELT, Belgium – Angry female lawyers have complained that bored prison guards are forcing them to remove their bras by pretending that metal wiring and clasps in their underwear is setting off security scanners.
Guards at Hasselt jail insist that the metal detectors used for their security checks on all visitors are so sensitive that even bras could set the scanners beeping.
Joseph Rowies, a representative of criminal barristers in the Flemish city, stressed that while women lawyers had no problem with the security checks, they had spotted that the prettier the visitor, the more sensitive the scanner became.
“The metal detection checks seem very difficult to carry out when a pretty, young lawyer or visitor reports to the prison gate. And then it becomes a little something to amuse the guards,” he told the Het Nieuwsblad newspaper.
“Time and again they let the metal detector go off. First, the shoes, then the jewellery. And, since the detector still beeps, they demand that the lady in question take off her bra.”
Rowies told the prison authorities that he was receiving at least one complaint a month from furious female barristers.
However, Laurent Sempot, a spokesman for Belgium’s directorate-general of prisons, dismissed the claims as “far-fetched”.
“Those who set off the device cannot enter. Those are the rules.” (Daily Telegraph)
