Staten har nå anket hele dommen fra lagmannsretten inn for Høyesterett, både de rettslige og faktiske forhold. Staten mener det ikke er grunnlag for å tilkjenne oppreisning og at oppreisningsnivået uansett er for høyt.
 
 «At Regjeringsadvokaten er mer opptatt av at grove og gjentatte menneskerettsbrudd er dyrt for staten enn å beklage og unnskylde at innbyggeres menneskerettigheter er krenket, er mildt sagt sjokkerende», sier advokatene Maria Hessen Jacobsen og Olaf Halvorsen Rønning i Elden Advokatfirma.

Kanadisk høyesterett har i R v. Golden påpekt:

«The importance of preventing unjustified searches before they occur is particularly acute in the context of strip searches, which involve a significant and very direct interference with personal privacy. Furthermore, strip searches can be humiliating, embarrassing and degrading for those who are subject to them, and any post facto remedies for unjustified strip searches cannot erase the arrestee’s experience of being strip searched. Thus, the need to prevent unjustified searches before they occur is more acute in the case of strip searches than it is in the context of less intrusive personal searches, such as pat or frisk searches.

Strip-searching is one of the most intrusive manners of searching and also one of the most extreme exercises of police power. The adjectives used by individuals to describe their experience of being strip searched give some sense of how a strip search, even one that is carried out in a reasonable manner, can affect detainees: “humiliating”, “degrading”, “demeaning”, “upsetting”, and “devastating”. Some commentators have gone as far as to describe strip searches as “visual rape” Women and minorities in particular may have a real fear of strip searches and may experience such a search as equivalent to a sexual assault. The psychological effects of strip searches may also be particularly traumatic for individuals who have previously been subject to abuse, (R. v. Golden, 2001, pkt. 89 – 90).

The forced removal of clothing and obligatory exposure of body parts considered to be sexual (e.g buttocks, anus, breasts, vagina) can be an unwanted sexual experince. That this practice is developed and implemeted by agencies of the state necessarily means the unwanted sexual experince is committed by the state. Strip searching is therefore a state-sanctioned and -inflicted sexual assualt, (Jessica Hutchison, 2020, Strip searching in Women´s prison as state inflicted sexual assult).

Når Kanadisk Høyesterett i R v. Golden viser til at strip search omtales som «visual rape» er det etter mitt syn ikke et spørsmål om oppreisningsnivået er for høyt, men om det er for lavt.