Bobbitt Testifies About Mutilation of Her Husband

Sobbing uncontrollably, Lorena Bobbitt told a hushed and tense courtroom Friday that she cut off her husband’s penis with a carving knife because she could no longer endure the rape, beatings and other abuse to which she said she was subjected during their four-year marriage.

But on the fourth day of her trial on a charge of malicious wounding, the prosecution sought to discredit Mrs. Bobbitt’s story during cross-examination by pointing out several contradictions between her latest testimony and the story she told both before and during the earlier trial of her husband, John Wayne Bobbitt, on charges of sexual assault.

As the cross-examination began, Assistant Commonwealth Atty. Mary Grace O’Brien zeroed in on Mrs. Bobbitt’s contention that she could not remember actually cutting off her sleeping husband’s penis after he allegedly raped her following a night of bar-hopping with a friend.

O’Brien noted that Mrs. Bobbitt had described the actual mutilation in previous statements and she indicated that a prosecution witness will testify that Mrs. Bobbitt once threatened to cut off her husband’s penis if she ever learned that he was having an affair.

The prosecution also asked Mrs. Bobbitt about a history of theft--noting she had embezzled $7,200 from the beauty parlor where she worked as a manicurist and once shoplifted a department store dress. The line of questioning appeared designed to portray Mrs. Bobbitt as a dishonest, disturbed and vengeful woman who became insanely jealous after learning that her husband indeed was having affairs with several women.

Relying mostly on testimony from about a dozen witnesses who said that they saw Bobbitt abuse his wife on numerous occasions, the defense has tried to portray Mrs. Bobbitt as a classic example of a battered wife who should not be held responsible for a desperate act committed in a moment of extreme emotional distress.

As the sensational trial that has both fascinated and horrified the nation nears a conclusion, with a verdict expected sometime next week, it was clear that Lorena Bobbitt’s fate would depend on which portrait--battered spouse or vengeful woman--the jury of seven women and five men finds more believable. If convicted, the 24-year-old Ecuadorian-born manicurist faces up to 20 years’ imprisonment and deportation to Venezuela, where she grew up.

John Bobbitt, a 26-year-old bar bouncer and former Marine, has steadfastly denied his wife’s accusations of abuse. He was acquitted of marital assault charges in the same courtroom in November.

Nervously clutching the small gold crucifix that she has worn around her neck throughout the trial, Mrs. Bobbitt took the stand Friday for the second day. She testified that near the end of their first year of marriage her husband pressured her into having an abortion, threatening to leave her if she refused and saying that “the baby would be ugly and I would be a terrible mother.”

Testifying again about the physical abuse that she has said he visited upon her, Mrs. Bobbitt said that her husband was fascinated by “karate guy movies” and would sometimes practice the moves on her, kicking her in the stomach, karate-style, whenever their arguments turned violent.

“He thought he was Jean Claude Van Damme,” she said in a soft voice, referring to the Belgian-born martial arts actor.

But it was at the point where she began relating her version of the events that led to the mutilation on the morning of June 23 that Mrs. Bobbitt lost the composure she clearly had been struggling to maintain.

Awakened by the sound of a door slamming about 3 a.m., Mrs. Bobbitt said that she heard her husband and a house guest return home to their small Manassas apartment 30 miles from Washington after a night of drinking.

She went back to sleep, she said, but awoke again to find her husband “on top of me” pinning her arms to her side and pulling down her underclothes with his foot.

“His chest was on top of me. I couldn’t breathe. I said: ‘What are you doing?’ He wouldn’t say anything. I said I don’t want to have sex. He wouldn’t let me go. . . . I tried to keep my legs closed. I tried to keep my underwear on but I couldn’t. . . . Hurt, he hurt me, he was hurting me,” she sobbed uncontrollably.

Mrs. Bobbitt said that when her husband had finished with her, she went into the kitchen to get a glass of water from the refrigerator. Standing there in the dim light cast by the open refrigerator door, she said that she saw the carving knife lying by the sink. She picked it up, she said, and stared at it while memories of past abuse raced through her head.

“I remembered many things,” she said in a quavering voice. “I remembered the first time he raped me. I remembered the insults. . . . I remembered the first time he forced me to have anal sex (and) the bad things he said. I remember the abortion. I remember everything,” she shuddered in her broken English.

She remembered nothing after that, Mrs. Bobbitt said, until she was driving her car to the home of a friend. Looking down, she saw with horror that her husband’s severed penis was in her left hand. She said that she immediately threw it out of the car window into a field, where police subsequently found it. It was later reattached in a nine-hour operation.

During her cross-examination, O’Brien questioned Mrs. Bobbitt’s memory lapse by noting that she had previously recalled returning to the bedroom, pulling back the sheets and looking at her husband before using the knife.

She also questioned Mrs. Bobbitt about several other conflicting statements in her most recent testimony. Referring to a rebuttal witness who has not yet been called, she asked the defendant whether she had ever threatened to mutilate her husband for having an extramarital affair.

Mrs. Bobbitt denied making a threat. But she broke into tears once more when she was asked about her history of theft. She said that she felt “ashamed” of her actions but was “desperate” because her husband was frequently out of work and took money from her, leaving her without enough to pay bills.

The trial is scheduled to continue on Tuesday with testimony by psychiatrists who have examined Mrs. Bobbitt.