Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, January 15, 1994 TAG: 9401150146
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: B1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: MANASSAS LENGTH: Long
Bobbitt testified that her head swirled with images of past abuse the night she claims her husband, John, raped her. As for cutting off his penis minutes after the alleged assault, she said, "No, I don't remember that."
She clung to the assertion despite what she said two months ago at John Bobbitt's trial: "I lifted the sheets and I cut it." He denied assaulting her and was acquitted.
Displaying the 9-inch, red-handled kitchen knife Bobbitt used, prosecutor Mary Grace O'Brien demanded, "What were you thinking when you picked up the knife? . . . Did you think about cutting John?"
"No," Bobbitt again insisted, saying her mind was filled only with horrible, humiliating episodes from her four-year marriage.
Concluding two days of emotional testimony, the 24-year-old manicurist described a life torn apart by Bobbitt's violent outbursts, selfishness, infidelity and insults.
She said she endured being hit, having her hair pulled, humiliated in public about her looks and even taunted about needles "so big they were going to go through my bones" before the abortion he insisted she have.
Bobbitt has pleaded innocent to a charge of malicious wounding, saying that years of abuse led to an irresistible impulse to strike back. The Ecuador native faces 20 years in prison and possible deportation if convicted. The trial has recessed until Tuesday because of Monday's holiday.
Under questioning from O'Brien, who alternated between being gentle and insistent, Bobbitt also admitted stealing from her employer and shoplifting from a department store.
She said she took the money because bills were piling up and her husband would not help her pay them. She said she later repaid her employer.
She said she took clothes because Bobbitt had said her dresses were ugly. "I wanted to be pretty for him," she said.
Bobbitt said she was awakened around 3 a.m. June 23 when her husband returned home with a friend from a night of drinking.
She said she went back to sleep, but woke up with Bobbitt on top of her, forcing her to have sex. Bobbitt, sobbing and wringing her hands, testified that her husband grabbed her wrists and pushed off her underwear with his foot as he pressed his shoulder into her face.
"I said, `I don't want to have sex.' He wouldn't listen to me," Bobbitt testified haltingly.
"I was just crying, crying loud, but I couldn't breathe. I just couldn't breathe," she said. "It was hurting me. He hurt me."
The sex was so rough, she said, that she felt "like my vagina was ripping open."
She paused and slumped forward, clutching the cross on her necklace. Regaining her composure, she testified that her husband pushed her away afterward and said he didn't care about her feelings. She demanded of him, she said, " `Why do you do this to me again and again and again?' "
Bobbitt said she tried to calm herself, going into the kitchen for a glass of water. It was there she saw the knife in the dim light cast by the open refrigerator.
She said her next memory was of screaming as she looked down and saw the organ in her hand as she drove away.
"I was driving. I couldn't make a turn. My hands were busy and I saw it and I screamed and I just threw it out," she said.
The severed penis landed in the grass near the road, where it was found and reattached surgically later that day.
John Bobbitt, 26, has denied ever striking his wife and claimed she often lashed out at him. He claims his wife cut him because she was jealous and angry that Bobbitt planned to leave the marriage. Both Bobbitts have filed for divorce.
O'Brien challenged Lorena Bobbitt's memory, noting she had told police "I pulled back the sheets and then I did it . . . cut him" as he slept. She insisted that was simply what she had assumed happened.
The prosecutor also suggested that Lorena Bobbitt once told a friend she would cut off her husband's penis if he ever had an affair. But she has denied saying it.
About the abortion, Bobbitt said, she was thrilled when she found out she was pregnant in the spring of 1990. But she said her husband got agitated and threatened to leave her if she didn't end the pregnancy.
She said he then made fun of her at the abortion clinic. "I was very nervous. He was laughing about me and I was crying."
Testimony concluded Friday with Dr. Susan Fiester, a psychiatrist who decided that Bobbitt fit the definition of a battered woman after 13 hours of interviews over four separate sessions.
"Lorena started to believe a lot of the things John was telling her," she said.
About 300 demonstrators stood outside the courthouse Friday shouting "Lorena" in support.
In Ecuador, about 100 members of a feminist organization demonstrated in support of Lorena Bobbitt outside the U.S. Consulate in the port city of Guayaquil.
The group - The National Feminist Association of Ecuador - has also threatened to castrate 100 American men if she is sent to prison.
The threat was made in telephone calls Friday to several news organizations.
The statement did not provide details on how the previously unknown group planned to carry out the attacks. But several American oil companies have offices in Ecuador, and thousands of American tourists visit each year.
Lorena Bobbitt was born in the small southern town of Bucay.
by CNB