If someone asked you, "Who is Lorena Gallo?" you probably wouldn't know what to answer. If they changed her maiden name to her married name: Bobbitt. Then you'd laugh and answer, "The woman who cut off her husband's penis." If they asked you why she did it? Maybe you'd say she "got revenge" because her partner "wasn't sexually satisfying" or "wanted a divorce."
And okay, I'm not judging you, 32 years ago the media headlined: "Wife takes revenge in slices»Or«The worst haircut for a man"while assuring them that no heterosexual person would ever sleep peacefully again.
Yes, it was the most publicized castration in history, but people still don't know the real reasons why Lorena took a kitchen knife, cut off her husband's penis while he was sleeping, ran away from home, threw the penis in a nearby garden, and hid in the beauty salon where she worked.
Lorena, born in Ecuador and raised in Venezuela, met John Bobbitt while in Manassas, Virginia, USA, on a student visa.
She was an 18-year-old virgin, a devout Catholic. He was a sexy 21-year-old ex-Marine. Ten months into their relationship, while they were enjoying a day at the pool, John dove to the bottom and pulled out an engagement ring. Lorena accepted the proposal "for life," complete with the "American dream," from her former boyfriend.
But a month after the wedding… hell began.
He was driving very drunk, she asked him to please stop, he ignored her, she swerved to avoid a crash, and he beat the hell out of her.
Before, there had been some scenes of jealousy, which she avoided paying attention to, although it hurt her that, at some point in the "fight," he always threatened to report her to immigration so she would be deported.
This was followed by four and a half years of physical violence and forcing her to foot the bill. John Bobbitt didn't work, but he always withdrew all the money from the joint account (from her two jobs) to go drinking.
In the end, he forced her to have an abortion, despite her immense desire to be a mother: "Choose, that thing or me." That pregnancy, however, could have been the result of one of the many times Lorena was raped by John.
That was what happened on June 23, 1993.
John came home drunk. He raped her more savagely than ever. Then he fell asleep. She went to the kitchen for a glass of water, saw the knife, and all the years of abuse came flooding back. Afterwards… she doesn't remember anything.
Before that night, Lorena had already reported her husband six times. When she tried to tell her mother, she said, "What do you do to make him so angry?" The internet wasn't what it is today. No one talked about domestic violence publicly, not even in her home state of Virginia, where five women were murdered every day.
When authorities found Lorena, they saw the bruises on her arms and neck. But they only bothered to ask her where she'd thrown her penis… so they could quickly reattach it to the young Marine serving the American homeland, something the doctors successfully accomplished after a nine-and-a-half-hour surgery.
Then, the justice system and the media began to ask, "If he was beating her, why didn't he leave?" They spoke of "marital duty" and claimed that it was impossible to rape your wife because that would be "a contradiction."
In fact, back then, Lorena herself said, "He forced me to have sex," because she, too, believed that rapists could only be strangers stalking you on the street. What's more, some feminists rejected her for "making women look like dangerous lunatics."
Still, there were two trials. The first was against him for sexual abuse. John denied everything and said she had attacked him because he asked for a divorce. That day, people took to the streets to support him. T-shirts were sold with Lorena's face, a demon holding a knife, and the phrase "love hurts," along with penis-shaped candies and decapitated plastic penises. John was found "not guilty." Virginia law only considered rape a crime if the couple lived apart or if there was "very serious physical harm."
Then came her trial. Lorena was charged with "serious bodily harm with malice aforethought," but... it was proven that she had called 911 several times, that her clients at the salon always saw her covered in bruises, and John's own friends testified that he used to tell them he liked it when women "writhed in pain during sex, bled, and cried for help."
Therefore, although Lorena faced a 20-year prison sentence, she was also found "not guilty."
An innocent man and a "not guilty" man who later lived their lives in very different ways.
John was a stripper, acted in porn films, and even had penis enlargement and thickening surgery that, like karma, went wrong, yet he still kept making money. All this despite his second partner accusing him of violence, and another woman alleging that he held her captive for three days, tortured her, raped her, tried to throw her off a balcony, etc.
Journalists stalked Lorena on the highways at high speed, a news anchor claimed for weeks, "I don't think he raped her, she's not that attractive," writer Philip Roth included her in a novel, rapper Eminem mentioned her in a song, neighbors urged her to move, Playboy offered her a million dollars if she posed nude for the magazine.
She rejected everything, she faced everything.
After spending time in a psychiatric clinic on court orders, she returned to work as a manicurist. Later, she became a hairdresser and, finally, a real estate agent. She continued to attend her church regularly and also enrolled in college. There, she met David Bellinger, who ignored the surname "Bobbitt" and fell in love with "Rooster." They married and had a daughter.
"I was the butt of a lot of jokes. It was cruel. I didn't understand why they were laughing at my suffering," says Lorena, who took decades and a lot of therapy to come to terms with it all: "I told myself: I'll put up with the jokes and everything else if it helps put the issue of gender-based violence and marital rape on the agenda."
Thus, she became a women's rights activist who has been helping victims of domestic violence for years with her foundation, Lorena's Red Wagon. And guess what? Today, John's patient still writes her "love" letters.
Meanwhile, all I can do is ask myself: if John had cut off a part of Lorena's body, would we have experienced the same media/cultural phenomenon?
Oh, there you go, I forgot that more than 230 million women and girls around the world have undergone genital mutilation and… no one has said anything.
By: Jessica Dos Santos /Instagram: Jessidossantos13
Tell me your story, write it however you like, together we shape it and share it. In life, spreading the different forms of love is always necessary: lasultimasnoticiasdelamor@gmail.com
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