On June 23rd, 1993, Lorena Bobbitt made headlines around the world after cutting off her husband's penis. She severed the member in the middle of the night, took it with her in her car, and threw it out of the window before calling the police and letting them know what she had done.
Just 24 years old at the time, Bobbitt was put on trial for her actions, but did not serve any jail time. She always claimed that John had been abusive towards her, and her decision to cut off his penis followed an incident that had occurred earlier that night. John had raped her, she said, and she acted out of revenge.
Lorena ended up spending some time in a psychiatric facility, as it was felt that she had been suffering a lot of mental distress at the time of the attack. John, meanwhile, was acquitted of any rape charges, and always insisted that the sexual relationship he had with his wife was entirely consensual. In the years following, he also went on to star in several pornographic films with his famously reattached penis, and managed to make a name for himself from the incident.
Now, 26 years after that fateful night, Lorena says she has absolutely no regrets.
Speaking to the New York Times, Bobbitt recalls what life was like for her in the first few months and years following the trial.
"When I finished with the trial, in the beginning, geez, I couldn’t even go to the grocery store because people would say, ‘Oh my god, You know what, I know you.’ I just wanted to put my groceries down and go home," she said. "I just wanted to take care of myself and my family. You know, just to integrate myself into normalcy and a normal life."
At the time, it was not widely publicised that Lorena's husband had allegedly been abusive. Indeed, most people who heard about the case thought that she had acted out of sheer insanity. It has only been in recent years that people have taken a second look at what happened, and reconsidered the circumstances that Lorena was under.
As a result, she was viewed negatively by the media for years.
When asked by Amy Chozick of the NY Times whether she regretted what happened, Bobbitt responded: "How can you regret something you didn’t mean to do?" She continued: "To me, regret is ‘Oh, I bought a black car instead of a red car’ when you don’t choose right. I wasn’t in my conscious mind."
Chozick then went on to explain that she didn't mean the attack itself, but the aftermath. After all, John Wayne Bobbitt went on to achieve fame and a positive reputation - meanwhile, she was left as the villain. Still, she gave the same analogy of the black and the red car, saying she could not regret something she couldn't truly control.
Over the past two decades, Bobbitt has managed to overcome a lot of the negative responses she gets from what happened.
"I was the subject of so many jokes in the ’90s and to me it was just cruel," she said. "They didn’t understand. Why would they laugh about my suffering?"
Now, she views it differently. "I’ll put myself through the jokes and everything as long as I can shine a light on domestic violence and sexual assault and marital rape," she explained.
Yes, Lorena Bobbitt may go down in history as the woman who cut off her husband's penis, but, especially now that conversations around domestic violence and abuse are changing, she doesn't pay it any mind. What happened, happened - she's just grateful she's out of the worst of it.
