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This has got to be the mother of all strip-and-search horror stories. A Florida mom was allegedly strip searched not once but twice in full view of passing motorists and her two children. And then, because that wasn't terrifying and humiliating enough, she says a female cop forcibly removed her freakin' TAMPON. She went Christian Grey on that poor mom!

Leila Tarantino was driving with her children, a one-year-old and a four-year-old, in the back seat. According to her lawsuit (yeah, it's that bad), she came to a complete stop. A cop in a car at the intersection waved her on, then changed his mind, made a U-turn, and pulled her over. The cops never told the woman why she was being searched -- but there has to be more to this story, right?

The way Tarantino's lawsuit tells it, you'd think the cops suspected her of being the Kingpin of a drug cartel, like Salma Hayek in Savages. I mean, why else would you be interested in what a mom might be hiding up in her lulu? And the cop who pulled her over held her at gunpoint from the beginning -- like she was dangerous. 

But they never brought in drug-sniffing dogs and they never found anything drug-related on her. They DID allegedly make her sit handcuffed in the back of the cop car -- with her kids still sitting in her car -- while he called for backup. Does that mean a cop left a small child and a baby alone in a car for two hours? Brilliant.

Let's just say there's more to this story that we don't know and Tarantino really is Salma Hayek from Savages. Even if that were the case, that wouldn't justify this kind of treatment. Even alleged drug cartel kingpins have a few rights. Shouldn't a woman be read her Miranda rights before having a feminine hygiene product forcibly zoiked out of her body by someone else's hands? "You have the right to be silent, you have the right to remove your own tampon yourself..." There's about fifty shades of wrong going on in this story, and we'll probably never get the full picture. But whoever Leila Tarantino is I hope she wins her lawsuit.

Do you think anything might justify the police treating someone this way?

Image via Daquella manera/Flickr