It is doubly revolting to know that the incident happened practically in our backyard.

A policy that would allow a strip search of a child is reprehensible enough. But even worse is the fact that staff at the Buckingham Correctional Center did not fully follow the policy: They ignored a safeguard that would have protected the child.

On the Sunday before Thanksgiving, the girl had been taken to Buckingham to see her father by the father’s girlfriend. The trip had taken 2½ hours — a not insignificant investment of time and effort to enable the child to keep a relationship going with her dad.

When the pair reached the prison, a drug-sniffing dog alerted on them. That’s when guards said they would have to be strip-searched in order to complete the visit.

“I told her, that means you have to take all of your clothes off or you’re not going to be able to see your dad,” girlfriend Diamond Peerman told the Virginian-Pilot. “That’s when she started crying.”

Since the incident, the child has missed school, the newspaper reported last week. She already deals with bipolar disorder, depression and ADHD, and the trauma of the search has worsened her symptoms, her mother said.

Can this story get any worse?

Unfortunately, yes it can.

Not only can visitors be turned away immediately by not submitting to a strip search, they can be barred from ever visiting again. That ratchets up the pressure considerably, forcing visitors to make the humiliating decision to endure the search.

But there’s more. The Virginia Department of Corrections’ own policy says that a child cannot be strip-searched without the permission of her legal guardian. No such permission was given, since her mother was not on the scene. But the strip search happened anyway.

Sure, the prison’s policy also requires a search when a drug dog signals an alert. Guards might have just thought they were doing their job.

But the idea of strip-searching a young child and inflicting possibly years of nightmares is reprehensible — even with a guardian’s permission and presence. There’s got to be a better way to protect children and at the same time satisfy concerns over potential contraband.

Additionally, the threat that once refusing a search might trigger a visiting ban in the future is far too harsh.

Gov. Ralph Northam has told his secretary of public safety and homeland security to suspend the strip-search policy while an investigation is going on. The investigation is being conducted by the VDOC.

Clearly, the corrections department needs to change its policy to protect innocent children from this type of trauma.

But there’s more to it than that. It also needs to ensure that its staff know and follow its policies.

Having a policy on the books isn’t enough — as we see in this case, where observing the existing policy would have prevented the search. Policies first must be sound, and then they must be followed.

The VDOC has a double job ahead of it: Make sure its policies are reasonable. And make sure they are obeyed.