Lorena Bobbitt, née Lorena Gallo (born in 1968 or 1969 in Venezuela) is an American woman who became famous after cutting off the penis of her husband, John Wayne Bobbitt.
On the night of June 23, 1993, Bobbitt cut several inches off her husband's sex organ with a kitchen knife as he lay sleeping. She then drove off with the severed appendage and flung it out her car window. Police performed a diligent search and located it, and it was then surgically reattached.
In statements to police, she explained that she had cut off the penis because her husband was "selfish" and "wouldn't give her an orgasm". She was charged with "malicious wounding", but was found not guilty in 1997 on the grounds that she had experienced an irresistible impulse to wound her husband, who also physically abused her. Therefore she was not liable for her actions. She was, however, ordered to spend 45 days in a mental hospital.
Her husband, John Wayne Bobbitt, had been acquitted of a charge of marital sexual assault in September of 1993. After his reattachment surgery, Bobbitt briefly became a porn star, appearing in the movies Frankenpenis and John Wayne Bobbitt … Uncut.
In 1995, Lorena Bobbitt divorced her husband and resumed the use of her maiden name, Lorena Gallo.
In 1998, Lorena Gallo was charged with assault for punching her mother, Elvia Gallo, as she watched television.
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