Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, October 6, 1993 TAG: 9310060148
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: B-3 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: MANASSAS LENGTH: Medium
James Lowe said Lorena Bobbitt was repeatedly beaten and raped by her husband, John Wayne Bobbitt. After he attacked her in their Manassas apartment on June 23, she was seized by an "irresistible impulse" that caused her to reach for a knife and cut him, Lowe said in an interview in the November issue of Vanity Fair magazine.
She faces trial Nov. 29 on a charge of malicious wounding.
Lowe said he will argue that people who have been repeatedly abused or beaten often have an altered mental state. Lowe did not return telephone calls asking for comment Tuesday.
Bobbitt told police she mutilated her husband after he raped her when he came home drunk from a night out with a friend.
John Bobbitt has been charged with marital sexual assault and his trial is set for Nov. 8. He denies the charge.
Both Bobbitts face up to 20 years in prison if convicted.
Bobbitt told the magazine she is appalled that some women have hailed her as a feminist heroine for striking back against alleged abuse.
"Nobody knows what I went through," she said. "Nobody knows anything about me."
She said that after her husband assaulted her, she went to the kitchen to get a glass of water.
"It was just so many things together. I was scared. . . . I was physically hurt. . . . The first thing I saw was a knife, when I turned. I grabbed that knife and, um, I went to the bedroom, and he was there, I guess, and he kind of, like, moved or something. I don't know. And I took the sheets off and I cut him."
She said she wishes she had never done it, but can't say for sure if she feels remorse, or if she feels he deserved it.
Bobbitt said she met her husband at a bar for enlisted men near the Quantico Marine base where he was posted.
After they married, their relationship deteriorated quickly into physical and sexual abuse, she said. She said she became pregnant once, but Bobbitt told her she would not be a good mother and forced her to get an abortion.
James Sehn, a urologist who helped perform the 9 1/2-hour operation to reattach Bobbitt's penis, said, "He has a working organ. It's very possible he's already had sex, and I wouldn't be surprised."
by CNB