SYLVESTER, Ga. – Nine students are suing the Worth County Sheriff’s Office after deputies locked down Worth County High School and personally searched every student for drugs.

Several students complained that deputies reached under their clothes and groped their breasts and genitals during pat downs performed during an unannounced drug sweep at Worth County High School in April, WALB reports.

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At least 30 students filed civil complaints against the sheriff’s office over the search, which came just a month after a less intrusive drug search conducted by the Sylvester Police Department that uncovered no drugs.

Worth County Sheriff Jeff Hobby told WALB he didn’t think the Sylvester Police sweep was thorough enough, so he requested drug sniffing dogs and conducted his own search under the supervision of school officials.

The search involved the dogs searching students’ lockers, cars and bags, as well as systematic pat downs during a four-hour school lockdown. Sheriff’s officials reportedly forced school administrators to withhold information about the search from parents, and confiscated student cell phones so they could not communicate during the questionable search.

The search, which Hobby defended as legal, ultimately yielded nothing.

Nine students are now suing the sheriff in the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Georgia over the “unlawful and intrusive” searches they allege violated their constitutional rights, The Washington Post reports.

One of the plaintiffs, a student identified only as J.E., described the humiliating ordeal for the Post.

He said deputies pulled all students out of his 10th grade agriculture class and lined them up in the hall, boys on one side and girls on the other. A deputy searched through his pockets and ran his hands up and down the student’s legs, he said.

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“He came up under my privates and then he grabbed by testicles twice,” J.E. said. “I wanted to turn around and tell him to stop touching me. I wanted it to be over and I just wanted to call my dad because I knew something wasn’t right.”

Others who were searched separately at the school described virtually the same procedure.

“Some people were crying,” a ninth-grader said. “Kids weren’t allowed to go home; they weren’t allowed to tell their parents” during the search.

During the searches, conducted in open view, deputies allegedly “touched and manipulated students’ breasts and genitals,” according to the lawsuit.

“Deputies inserted fingers inside girls’ bras, and pulled up girls’ bras, touching and partially exposing their bare breasts,” it alleges. “Deputies touched girls’ underwear by placing hands inside waistbands of their pants or reaching up their dresses.”

The deputies also “touched girls’ vaginal areas through their underwear” and “cupped or groped boys’ genitals and touched their buttocks through their pants,” the lawsuit alleged.

“I’m not aware of anything like this ever happening in Georgia,” Mark Begnaud, one of the students’ lawyers, told the Post. “It’s obviously unconstitutional, a textbook definition of police overreach.”

The school district’s attorney, Tommy Coleman, said students’ descriptions of the search are accurate. Coleman said school officials were told by the sheriff that he planned to conduct a drug search, but did not authorize deputies to personally search every student.

“I don’t think anybody in the school system had any idea that it would be of the nature of what actually happened,” he told the Post. “I’ve been doing this a long time, and I’ve never heard of anybody doing that kind of thing.”

Coleman said police must have probable cause to believe a student possesses something illegal before a search can be conducted.

“If you don’t have that then this search would violate an individuals rights,” said Coleman. “[It] violates the constitutional right and enforcing them the right against unreasonable search and seizures.”

The Sylvester Police processed scores of complaints about the sheriff’s search and forwarded the reports to the Georgia Bureau of Investigations. Numerous parents also complained to the Georgia Board of Education, though a board spokesperson told WALB the issue is beyond its jurisdiction.

Interim Worth County Superintendent Lawrence Walters sympathized with parents, and said the search wasn’t the district’s idea.

“We did not give permission but they didn’t ask for permission,” Walters said of the sheriff’s department, “he just said, the sheriff, that he was going to do it after spring break.”

Interim Worth County Superintendent Lawrence Walters said he understands parents concerns about the drug search at Worth County High school on Friday.

“I’ve never been involved with anything like that ever in the past 21 years and I don’t condone it,” the superintendent continued. “Under no circumstances did we approve of touching any students.”

Sheriff Hobby, meanwhile, released a statement acknowledging that at least one deputy got a little too handsy with students, but otherwise defended the drug search.

“After the pat down was conducted it was discovered that one of the deputies had exceeded the instructions given by the Sheriff and conducted a pat down of some students that was more intrusive than instructed by the Sheriff,” the statement said. “Upon discovery of the deputy’s actions, the Sheriff has taken corrective action to insure that this behavior will not occur again.”

Attorneys for the nine students are seeking class action status to represent all students searched at Worth County High School last month.

The lawsuit seeks unspecified compensatory and punitive damages, attorneys’ fees, and “a declaratory judgement stating that a law enforcement officer violates a student’s rights under the United States and Georgia Constitutions when he conducts a search of the student’s body absent voluntary consent or individualized suspicion that the student has violated the law.”