A female lawyer has been forced to remove her bra before being allowed to visit her client in prison in Ireland.
The solicitor was told to remove the undergarment by a male guard who said it had set off the prison's metal detector.
She described the incident, which took place in front of four male guards and a senior male counsel at Cloverhill Prison, Dublin, as traumatising and degrading.
'Not only did I feel extremely vulnerable and targeted as a woman, I felt humiliated that my dignity had been so casually torn from me,' she said.
In her complaint, the unidentified woman said she complied with the order because the meeting with her client was concerning urgent bail proceedings.
She later discovered a male colleague had been allowed to enter the prison three times without removing his clothing despite setting off the alarm on each visit, local media reported.
The incident on June 11 last year sparked an investigation into the Dublin prison's security procedures after several women spoke out about experiencing the same treatment.
A female lawyer has been forced to remove her bra before being allowed to visit her client in Cloverhill Prison in Dublin, Ireland
The solicitor was told to remove the undergarment by a male guard who said it had set off the prison's metal detector. The incident, in June last year, took place in front of four male guards and a senior male counsel (file photo)
A former prison guard told the Irish Examiner, which first reported the incident, the practice was widespread.
She described a culture of sexism and said guards targeted 'people they thing they can bully', often asking older women to remove their bras.
'I've seen it a million times', she said.
Several lawyers said they had
