Lorena Bobbitt
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What Was the Accusation?
Lorena Bobbitt, now known as Lorena Gallo, became the subject of international attention after severing the penis of her husband, John Wayne Bobbitt, with a kitchen knife in their Manassas, Virginia, home during the early morning of June 23, 1993. She then left the apartment with the severed organ and threw it from her car. After she told authorities where she had discarded it, police recovered the organ and doctors surgically reattached it. The unusual nature of the incident generated enormous media attention and made both Lorena and John Bobbitt internationally recognizable figures.
The physical act itself was not disputed, but the circumstances surrounding it became the central issue in two criminal trials. Lorena alleged that John had physically, emotionally, and sexually abused her during their marriage and that he raped her shortly before the cutting. John denied raping her and disputed her characterization of their relationship. Prosecutors charged him with marital sexual assault, but on November 10, 1993, a Prince William County jury found him not guilty. The verdict reflected the jury’s determination that prosecutors had not proved the criminal charge beyond a reasonable doubt; it did not resolve every disputed allegation concerning the couple’s marriage.
Lorena was separately prosecuted for malicious wounding. During her January 1994 trial, she testified about what she described as years of beatings, sexual assaults, threats, humiliation, and other abuse. Other witnesses testified about injuries or incidents they said were consistent with portions of her account. Mental-health experts presented competing assessments of her psychological condition, although testimony on both sides acknowledged significant psychological problems. Her defense argued that the accumulated abuse and the events of June 23 produced an irresistible impulse that left her temporarily unable to control her actions. On January 21, 1994, the jury found Lorena not guilty by reason of insanity. She was committed to Central State Hospital for psychiatric evaluation and was released on February 28, 1994, with a requirement that she continue outpatient therapy.
The case quickly became more than a criminal proceeding. News coverage frequently emphasized the sexual injury and treated the story as spectacle, while domestic-violence advocates argued that the sensational coverage obscured the allegations of abuse at the center of Lorena’s defense. The case also generated discussion about marital rape, intimate-partner violence, the treatment of abused women in the criminal justice system, and the way news organizations cover sexual violence. Lorena later criticized the media for concentrating on John’s injury rather than the domestic-violence issues she believed had produced the crisis.
Lorena’s later public statements make this an unusual apologia case because her response has changed in emphasis over time and does not fit the model of an unconditional apology. In a 1993 interview with Vanity Fair, she said that she wished she had never committed the cutting and, when asked whether John deserved what happened, said, “Nobody deserves this. Nobody deserved any of it. This is a nightmare.” Twenty-five years later, however, she resisted describing her feelings as regret. In a 2018 TIME interview, she said she had not planned the act, felt terrible about what John experienced, and considered him a victim of domestic violence as a result of what she did. At the same time, she maintained that her own history of domestic violence drove her actions and argued that she lacked the mental capacity at the time to choose between right and wrong.
In the decades after the trials, Lorena increasingly used the public attention surrounding her case to advocate for people experiencing domestic violence. She founded the Lorena Gallo Foundation in 2018, whose stated mission includes domestic-violence and sexual-assault prevention education, emergency-response resources, and community engagement. Her contemporary public defense therefore combines acknowledgment of the harm suffered by John with an explanation that places her conduct within the history of abuse she alleged and the psychological state accepted by the jury in her criminal trial.
Key Apologia Strategies:
Defeasibility, Provocation, Mortification
Video
Transcript
Excerpts from Lorena Bobbitt’s 1993 Vanity Fair Interview:
“Nobody knows what I went through. Nobody knows anything about me.”
“The next thing I remember, he was on top of me. I said, ‘No, get off of me. I don’t want to have sex.’ And he wouldn’t get off of me. … I was fighting and I just grabbed my pants. … I heard my underwear rip. And his chest was really on me. And he’s heavy. I couldn’t breathe, I couldn’t scream. … I couldn’t even move.”
“He opened my legs and he put his tongue inside [my throat], very, very low. I felt like I was going to throw up. . . . He continued doing it, having intercourse, and he pushed me away. And I was just crying. I stand up. And I said, ‘Why you do this to me?’ He pushed me away and said, ‘Leave me alone.’ So I stood up from the bed and I was just looking for my pants. I put my spandex shorts on and I just said, ‘You can’t do this to me. And you did it again and again and again.’ And I said, ‘Why you do this to me?’ And then he said he doesn’t care, and he said, ‘Leave me alone. ‘ I cry and I cry. “
[She says she then went to the kitchen]. “The refrigerator light was on. The door was really wide open. … It was just so many things together. I was scared. … I was physically hurt. I was feeling hurt. I don’t know. It was everything together. I couldn’t describe it. I don’t know the words to describe it. . . . The first thing I saw was a knife, when I turned. I grabbed that knife and, um, I went to the bedroom, and, and he was there, I guess.”
“I don’t know. And I took the sheets off and I cut him. I remember many things. I was thinking many things. I was thinking the first time he hit me. I was thinking when he raped me. I was thinking so many things, just really quick. I don’t know. … I just wanted him to disappear. I just wanted him to leave me alone, to leave my life alone. I don’t want to see him anymore.”
“Nobody deserves this. Nobody deserved any of it. This is a nightmare.”
Excerpts from Lorena Gallo’s June 22, 2018 TIME Interview:
Discussing the 1993 incident, she said:
“I never planned to do such a thing to my husband.”
“He was actually a victim of domestic violence, if you take a look at it, but I had a history of domestic violence, so that drove me to do what I did to him.”
Asked what she wanted younger people who knew the case primarily from sensational headlines to understand, Lorena emphasized that she had not planned the attack and that there was a history behind it:
“It was not my intention to do that. I felt terrible that he went through his whole thing.”
When specifically asked whether she regretted what happened, Lorena rejected the premise that she had exercised ordinary conscious control over the act. She said that John had abused and choked her and explained:
“I didn’t have the capability, mentally, to choose right from wrong. [So] there’s no such thing as regret.”
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Sources
Masters, K. (1993, November 1). Sex, lies, and an 8-inch carving knife. Vanity Fair. https://www.vanityfair.com/style/1993/11/lorena-bobbitt-interview-sex-lies-carving-knife
Miller, B. (1994, January 21). Bobbitt acquitted in attack on husband. The Washington Post. https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/1994/01/22/bobbitt-acquitted-in-attack-on-husband/261352ce-974b-4424-a03f-695adc8aeaee/
Ross, M. (1994, January 15). Bobbitt testifies about mutilation of her husband. Los Angeles Times. https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1994-01-15-mn-12044-story.html
Sanchez, C., & Tousignant, M. (1993, November 10). Jury acquits Bobbitt. The Washington Post. https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/1993/11/11/jury-acquits-bobbitt/27e1b0b3-dfaf-4f8b-b468-301e74b919f4/
TODAY. (2019, February 8). Lorena Bobbitt opens up about media scrutiny: ‘It hurts my heart’ | TODAY [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kkv-MngIxJ4
Waxman, O. B. (2018, June 22). ‘He could have killed me.’ Lorena Bobbitt on domestic abuse and what she wants you to know about her case 25 years later. TIME. https://time.com/5317979/lorena-bobbitt-today-anniversary-interview/