Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, January 13, 1994 TAG: 9401130193
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: The Washington Post
DATELINE: MANASSAS LENGTH: Medium
Taking the stand in her own defense, the 24-year-old manicurist relived her troubled marriage for a jury Wednesday, saying John Wayne Bobbitt represented "everything to me" when she married him in June 1989, but that their relationship quickly turned ugly under a barrage of beatings and other abuse that ended when she cut off his penis in June.
"I was in love with him. He was in love with me. That's the way I think it was," she said. But a month after they were married by a justice of the peace in Stafford County, she said, her husband struck her after she complained he was driving too fast. That was the first time he hit her, she said, but not the last.
In more than two hours on the witness stand, Lorena Bobbitt related more than a dozen instances in which she said her 26-year-old husband kicked, punched, choked, grabbed or belittled her. He also raped her, she testified.
Bobbitt is charged with malicious wounding in the attack on her husband, which she says was provoked when he raped her. John Bobbitt was acquitted of marital rape two months ago.
In contrast to her flustered, inconsistent testimony then, Bobbitt was composed on the stand Wednesday, faltering only twice, both times when she was asked to describe instances where she says her husband forced himself on her.
Her confidence may have been bolstered by a lineup of 16 defense witnesses who preceded her on the stand over the past two days to testify that John Bobbitt had a volatile temper and exhibited thuggish behavior. Photographs of a bruised and cut Lorena Bobbitt have been introduced as evidence.
For the past two days, it has seemed as if it was John Bobbitt - not his wife - on trial again. The testimony about the couple's marriage was barred from his November trial, which focused solely on the five days leading up to the early hours of June 23 when Lorena Bobbitt cut off his penis.
by CNB