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Shailene Woodley reveals traumatic strip search after protest arrest

Shailene Woodley has revealed her traumatic experiences after being arrested while protesting the Dakota Access pipeline at Standing Rock in North Dakota last year.

The ‘Divergent’ star said that protesters were met with military tanks, and that she was strip searched while in custody.

She added too that after her release, she withdrew into herself, turning her phone off for three months and experiencing ‘post-traumatic stress’-like symptoms.

Woodley’s arrest was caught on camera, with some 40,000 people on Facebook Live as she had her wrists zip tied by authorities and was taken away to Morton County Jail.

“I’m like, ‘This is some ‘Divergent’ sh*t,” she told Marie Claire, as she saw tanks roll in. “The only time in my life that I saw a tank like that was on set in Atlanta.


“I was strip-searched. Like get naked, turn over, spread your butt cheeks, bend over. They were looking for drugs in my ass,” she told Marie Claire.

“When you’re in a jail cell and they shut that door, you realise no one can save you. If there’s a fire and they decide not to open the door, you’ll die. You are a caged animal.”

She was arrested for ‘engaging in a riot during a protest at a construction site that involved about 300 people’, though the protest itself was peaceful.

It was organised to combat plans for an oil pipeline which is set to threaten Native American burial grounds and also water supplies near the Standing Rock Reservation.

She was released on bail a few hours after her arrest, and later pleaded guilty to criminal trespass and received a year’s probation.

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