WHEN Lorena Bobbitt cut off her husband’s penis with a butcher’s knife, it made headlines worldwide.
It is just over 30 years since she went on trial for the shocking crime, which saw her attack husband John, before driving off with his member and throwing it out of a car window.
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Police later retrieved it from a field and put it on ice in a hotdog box, before surgeons were able to reattach it following a nine-hour operation.
Both went through court cases that laid bare the violence and lack of trust in their four-year marriage.
The-then 24-year-old manicurist Lorena claimed her husband John Wayne Bobbitt raped her before he fell asleep that night, prompting her to take a knife to his groin.
But the former US Marine John was found not guilty of marital sexual assault and maintains that he did not abuse her. He later used his fame to launch a stint as a porn star – and even formed a rock band called The Severed Parts.
And after undergoing 45 days of psychiatric examinations, Lorena was acquitted of malicious wounding after the court concluded she was temporarily insane, which led her to mutilate her husband while he slept.
Now, a new ITV documentary reveals the extraordinary case is actually one of many and explores what really drives such unique acts of violence.
The one-off film, called I Cut Off His Penis: The Truth Behind The Headlines, which airs tonight, hears the personal testimony of both women and men who have witnessed and felt the impact of this act, known as penicide.
Speaking in the documentary, Lorena says: “As the whole world knows, I cut his penis off. There’s no way for me to candy-coat it. I just said it, because that’s what happened.”
However, she adds that the world “misses the essence of what this whole story was about”, saying: “That’s not who I am, so it’s not why I did it. It’s about what put me in that position.”
Campaigners and psychologists also weigh in on the psychology behind penicide, with one expert explaining: “We often say it’s not an abnormal act – it’s a normal response to an abnormal experience.”
‘Red flags’
Lorena was born in Venezuela and moved to America when she was 17 “for more opportunities.”
She says: “That was my American dream. Work very hard and find somebody that I could marry, buy a house, have children.”
She adds: “And up until I met my ex-husband everything was fine.”
Lorena worked as a nail technician in a beauty salon and met John at the Marine Club.
She recalls: “He was very nice, very charming, very kind and I just fell in love with him. He had these beautiful blue eyes and I just thought this guy is very attractive, like a poster guy for the Marines.
“Coming from a Catholic background, I never had any boyfriends before. Like I said, I was very young. I was very naive. He was my first love. It was just so innocent and so natural. So yes, it did move quite fast.”
Lorena describes in the film how he proposed to her after finding a ring at the bottom of a swimming pool. The couple got married shortly after Lorena’s 20th birthday.
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She says: “They threw us a very nice sweet reception at the campground.”
But she claims that after the reception, John left for a couple of hours to go to a strip bar with his friends.
Lorena says: “I found out later that was going on.”
She adds: “Those were red flags. Big red flags, right? But to me, the sense of being married meant a lot because God says divorce is not acceptable.”
Lorena claims that about a month after they tied the knot, he began to be physically abusive to her.
She alleges: “It escalated to the point that I was raped. In a healthy relationship, yes, you have arguments – not to the point where your husband beats you up or rapes you.
“People say why did she not leave, why did she not pack up and go? Well, it’s not easy.”
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She adds: “He made me feel like I was his property. You’re trapped in this situation and there’s no way out. I tried to get away from him but he told me, ‘No matter where you, I’m always going to find you.”
The incident happened on June 23, 1993 in Manassas, Virginia. Lorena recalls: “I was working in a nail salon. I was very tired. I was exhausted.
“We closed the salon at 8pm so I went off to get something to eat before I went home and I fall asleep.
“The next thing I remember is John on top of me. Half asleep/half awake, I was like ‘what’s going on here?’ That’s all I remember.
“I remember that I went to get a glass of water. I don’t remember seeing the knife. I don’t remember any of that.”
She claims she has no memory of chopping off his private parts.
Lorena says: “Next thing I do remember is I was driving in the car and I have the penis in one hand and the knife in the other hand.
“I couldn’t drive straight. I have no idea how I got into the car.”
She adds: “I got scared and I threw it out of the window, his organ.
“I was not in my right frame of mind.”
She admits she didn’t “have a plan” and called her boss who phoned the police before taking Lorena to the hospital.
Lorena recalls: “Ironically he was on the other side of the hospital.”
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Journalist Glen Oglaza covered the case for ITV News and compares it to “like something from a horror film.”
Speaking in the documentary, he says of the court case: “It was like the circus had come to town.
“It wasn’t just all the TV cameras and satellite trucks from around the world, there was a carnival atmosphere.
“There were food stalls. There were drinks. There was sausages, hot dogs, all the puns you can imagine.
“People were selling T-shirts, most of them supporting John Wayne Bobbitt.”
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He adds: “The way that it generated interest around the world was very unusual, particularly for what was basically a domestic story. It wasn’t a war.
“And the amount of interest was incredible because it’s not the first or last time that this has happened.”
As the trial progressed, Glen says “the pendulum of sympathy swung from him to her.”
Reflecting on what happened, Lorena says: “Sometimes I wish it didn’t happen to me. My life is not a tape that I can rewind.”
Speaking about her life now, she says: “I have become a mother. I have a relationship with this wonderful man. It’s really a matter of having a new life.”
She has set up the Lorena Gallo Foundation, a not-for-profit organisation, which supports victims of domestic violence.
Lorena says: “I’m not only a survivor, but I’m advocate against domestic violence and sexual assault and marital rape.”
Waves of mutilation
While the number of penicide cases remains low today, experts tell the documentary that incidents have strangely often come in waves over past decades.
Jacqueline Helfgott, a professor at the Department of Criminal Justice at Seattle University, explains: “Men and women have cut off penises since the dawn of time.
“If you look historically there’s lots of examples of penis cutting around the world.
“And there have been waves of what’s happened in countries like Vietnam, Kenya – so in a community where you have one, you see patterns of a series of women.
“A whole wave of that could be a contagion effect.”
My date cut off my penis
A BRITISH man reveals in the documentary how his partner cut off his penis – five years after John Wayne Bobbitt.
Speaking in the film, Ollie says: “When the Bobbitt case come up, the whole world knew about it but they didn’t know about my case.”
He describes how he and a woman known only as Linda in the film had been in a “casual relationship”.
Ollie says: “It was coming to an end as far as I was concerned.”
It happened in 1998 after a night in the pub. He says: “When we got to her place, it was a case of we’d go upstairs to her bedroom. That’s where it all began and where it all ended.
“The lights were off, the curtains were drawn. I didn’t even see anything. That’s when she produced the stanley blade.
“I didn’t feel pain. I felt a warm sensation with the blood. The first thing I said is, ‘what have you done?’ and she just ran out. And I thought, ‘boy, I’m in trouble.
“Blood everywhere.”
Ollie ran to a phone box to call an ambulance and was rushed to hospital.
He recalls: “The attack did come out of the blue. She picked her moment. She picked her target. She done it when I was most vulnerable.”
To this day, he still doesn’t understand her motive for the horrific attack. Ollie says: “I wasn’t aware of any underlying situation. I still can’t understand what made Linda do something like that. What was in her mind?
“She never displayed anything of that kind of nature.”
He adds: “I wasn’t angry until I got to court because I did not know what kind of person Linda was. She had previous for other forms of violence. And I did not know.”
Ollie admits it affected his ability to trust future partners. He explains: “When something like that happens, you probably put a barrier between you and a woman.”
But he went on to find love with his wife Sue. The couple have been married for 28 years and they have two daughters.
Speaking to Ollie, she says: “You had to learn to trust a woman with your feelings. You were just frightened to do things your body usually does when you’re with a woman. It took a long time to happen.
“I think our relationship progressed quite slow. The intimacy side of things was a good nine months to a year.”
And Sue says of Linda’s actions: “To do that, it beggars belief. I think it was a case of Linda realising that the relationship, whatever it was, was coming to an end. I think she really thought that she would do this to him so nobody else could ever have him.”
*All names have been changed
Dr Apirag Chuangsuwanich, from Siriraj Hospital in Bangkok, recalls a particular “epidemic of amputations” across Thailand in the 1970s, with approximately 100 cases of ‘penicide’ nationwide.
It became so alarming that the the Ministry of Public Health sent out information leaflets explaining how to preserve severed organs.
“We started receiving such patients one after the other,” Dr Apirag adds.
“I believe it led to copycat incidents. In some cases the wife had tried to destroy the severed part by flushing it down the toilet or throwing it to animals to eat.”
Tragic cases
Another tragic case covered in the documentary is that of Brigitte Harris, who cut off her father Eric’s penis following years of sexual abuse as a child.
After researching cases including the Bobbitt trial and buying a scalpel on eBay, the New Yorker, now 43, handcuffed her father to a chair, gagged him and sliced off his penis before throwing it into the ocean in 2007.
However, in a grim turn of events, after she called police and ambulance services, they arrived to find Eric had choked to death on his gag.
Brigitte was eventually convicted of manslaughter in the second degree after her sister testified that Eric had abused her too.
She was sentenced to the maximum of five to 15 years in prison, but was released on parole after three.
Explaining her actions, she insisted she didn’t mean to kill her father, but wanted to stop him committing further assaults.
She said: “I remember what he did to me when I was sitting on his lap and there was no way I was going to let that happen, so I made up a plan… to stop him doing to others what he did to me, to stop him hurting anyone else.
“When I read about the Bobbitt case and that they were able to reattach his penis I wanted to make sure that couldn’t happen so I would destroy it.”
What unites both Lorena and Brigitte is an insistence that their actions were not motivated by vengeance.
And while motivation can vary, Harriet Wistrich, founder and director of the Centre for Women’s Justice, has an explanation for the psychological pressures that often lead to penicide.
The solicitor says: “We often say it’s not an abnormal act – it’s a normal response to an abnormal experience. You need to look at the circumstances of what took place and the woman’s specific history.”
I Cut Off His Penis: The Truth Behind The Headlines airs at 9pm tonight on ITV1 and is available on ITVX