Lorena Bobbitt, 15 Years Later
Exactly 15 years ago this week the world first heard the story of John Wayne and Lorena Bobbitt. John Wayne, an ex-Marine, was accused of coming home drunk and raping his wife. Lorena was accused of retaliating by cutting off her husband's penis while he was asleep.
Lorena went from anonymous to notorious - her story the subject of countless newspaper and magazine articles. Now in her first ever network morning show interview she discusses how she's using her notoriety to help others.
"All of a sudden, my private life is out in the open and it's an open book and a lot of people know my history," she told The Early Show "Sometimes I couldn't even go to the grocery store to buy food because I would be recognized."
Today, the once shy native of Ecuador who barely spoke English is a confident 39-year-old who works as a real estate agent and next month gets her hairdressing license.
"My self esteem is a lot better than it was years ago. I grew a lot," she said. "I learned to cope with this. I cannot have myself with a blanket over my head and not to live, might as well go into the mountains and forget everybody. I had to make a choice so I just said 'Hey, I have to keep going, this is my life.'"
Lorena is now a mother to two-and-a-half-year-old Olivia - and in case you're wondering, yes, there is a man - fiancé Dave Bellinger.
"We've been together for 14 years and he's just wonderful," she said. "He's my best friend and he is a good father. Before, when I was young, when I was married, I was really naïve and young, I didn't know what I wanted."
While Lorena has stayed out of the spotlight since a jury found her not guilty by reason of temporary insanity - ex husband John Wayne has sought it out - making numerous TV appearances and starring in several highly publicized adult films.
"That kind of did bother me that he was, you know, going up and trying to make money off a tragedy and you know that was a tragedy. I mean if he doesn't consider it a tragedy then he's wrong," she said.
John Wayne has also had several brushes with the law including a 2003 domestic violence conviction.
"I hope that he's definitely seeking help. If he needs help because he does need help, you know, he keeps on abusing women and I'm working on my goal and I'm trying to focus on my life and I do have a new life," she said.
The focus of her new life is Lorena's Red Wagon - an organization which provides funds to abused women in shelters who seek mental health counseling.
"They've gone through a lot, and I know that," she said. "Who knows that better than me?"
She hopes one day to open her own shelter and prevent women from making the same mistakes she did.
"Don't ever take the law into your own hands. No, never," she said. "Because take that from me, that's the advice that I give, don't take the law into your hands - it's not good."
Lorena and John Wayne Bobbitt divorced in 1995 after six years of marriage. She said that she hasn't spoken to him since.
A Million Mrs. Bobbitts - Published: January 28, 1994
Lorena Bobbitt's response to being continually raped, sodomized and beaten by her husband was uniquely bizarre. But her situation was commonplace. What happened to Mrs. Bobbitt happens, in varying degrees, to more than a million American women every year.
In 1992 the Senate Judiciary Committee issued a staff report titled "Violence Against Women: A Week in the Life of America," a depressing litany of sexual assaults, physical abuse, knifings and shootings. The victims are women; the perpetrators are, for the most part, their husbands and lovers.
The report is only 22 pages long, but each page is enough to turn the stomach. It also serves to put Lorena Bobbitt in perspective. She is, quite simply, one of a crowd.
The Violence Against Women Act, introduced by Senator Joseph Biden in 1990, has finally made its way into the Federal crime bill that Congress is soon to confront. The Biden proposal authorizes more money for law enforcement, victim services and preventive education, and would toughen Federal laws. These are all worthy goals.
The Senate version of the bill also extends civil rights protection to gender-based hate crimes like rape (98.9 percent of the victims are women). The House version would allow battered immigrant women to petition on their own for legal status, thus nullifying the control that husbands now exercise over the petition.
Ideally, the bill that ultimately emerges from Congress will include both provisions.
If the Bobbitt case provoked a lot of nervous laughter, the situation itself was no joke. Neither is the situation the Violence Against Women Act can help remedy.
Lorena Bobbitt Looks To The Future - After Release From Mental Hospital - March 01, 1994|Los Angeles Times
Lorena Bobbitt was released from a mental hospital on Monday, five weeks after a jury found her innocent by reason of temporary insanity in the sexual mutilation of her husband.
"I really learned a lot, especially about how men and women treat each other," Bobbitt said outside the Manassas, Va., courthouse where her trial attracted worldwide attention last month.
Accepting a medical evaluation that said Bobbitt posed no threat to herself or to others, Judge Herman Whisenant ruled that the Ecuadorian-born manicurist could be freed from a Virginia state hospital as long as she remained in the state and continued to undergo psychiatric counseling.
Bobbitt's attorney, James Lowe, said his client planned to move in "with a family that has been very supportive of her" and to return to her $24,000-per-year job as a manicurist. Her media agent, Alan Hauge, said she would make public appearances and sell the rights to her story for a TV movie and a book.
Smiling broadly as she emerged from the courthouse after a brief hearing, Bobbitt said she wanted to get on with her life and had not given up her "American dream" of someday remarrying and having children, once she and her estranged husband, John Bobbitt, are divorced.
"I am looking forward to my healing process," Bobbitt said in halting English. "Someday I would like to have children ... and I will have my American dream again."
Under the terms of her release, Bobbitt will have to undergo psychiatric counseling with a private therapist whose treatments will be monitored by a court-appointed case manager. She may not leave the state or drop out of therapy until the court rules that she is cured.
Whisenant's ruling was consistent with a report last week by state psychiatrists who said that Bobbitt was no longer temporarily insane and would pose no threat to society if released.