A female officer held Hannah Laing’s hands while another searched “absolutely everywhere”, including inside her underwear.
The Dundee DJ had been at the loo with her cousin. That was the offence.
Laing, 31, had just finished her set at Isle of Summer in Munich on 9 May.
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She and her cousin opened a portaloo door and walked straight into plain-clothes police.
They thought it was a bag check
Officers walked them through the crowd to a private tent.
Female officers inside said they suspected drug use.
Laing assumed the search would cover pockets and bags.
It didn’t.
“One officer held my hands and the other did an invasive search all over including in my underwear, front and back, feeling absolutely everywhere,” she said.
Her cousin was in tears. Laing says she felt “degraded and embarrassed”. So did her cousin.
A warning sign nobody could read
The officers pointed to notices on the portaloos. The notices were in German. Laing and her cousin don’t speak German.
According to Laing, the sign said anyone entering a cubicle with another person would be banned from the festival.
It said nothing about a strip search.
“At no point were we clearly told that this would be such an intimate search,” she said.
“If we had been given the option we would have left the festival and not agreed to a strip search.”
Her warning to other Brits
Posting about it online, Laing told British festival-goers heading to Germany not to share toilets with friends.
“Don’t go to the toilet with your mate at German festivals,” she said.
She has not said whether she plans to make a formal complaint.
Why it matters
This is the kind of story creators now bring home from international tours.
A British DJ flies to Germany, plays a set, something happens in the next twelve hours, and her audience hears about it before any of the festival’s official content goes out.
The reach belongs to the artist. The reputational hit lands on the venue.
Festivals across mainland Europe have spent years expanding their British-DJ bookings, particularly in the techno and house circuit Laing works in.
Most of the audience drawn by those bookings will see her video before they ever look up the lineup.
Whether Isle of Summer responds, and whether next year’s signage finally appears in English, is the part to watch.
