WARNING: This story contains graphic details.
Lorena Bobbitt wants to set the record straight.
Not about how she cut off John Wayne Bobbitt’s penis with a kitchen knife as he slept in 1993. She did that, though she doesn’t recall the moment and was later acquitted by reason of temporary insanity.
Lorena, who now goes by her maiden name Gallo, wants to correct the image that she was just a vengeful wife. Inspired by shifting cultural tides around sexual assault, Lorena Gallo is determined to become more than a 1990s punchline and instead an advocate for victims of domestic violence.
“I have a voice and it only grew stronger,” she said this week in an interview with CTV News Channel’s Angie Seth.
Gallo has alleged that she faced years of abuse by her husband, who was acquitted of marital sexual assault in 1993. During the trials, the couple became the subject of late-night monologues and SNL sketches with Gallo as the stereotype of the angry wife. When the media moved on to the Tonya Harding and O.J. Simpson scandals, the legacy seemed all but cemented in the shape of a phallus. Her name became synonymous with castration. The term “Bobbittized punishment” was coined. Her husband would even go on to star in two pornographic films, one dubbing his reattached member the “Frankenpenis.”
Gallo felt vilified by the media and the public, who instead of framing the story around domestic violence always came back to the severed organ, which she had tossed in a field that night before calling 911. She told CTV News Channel that the case was “sensationalized” by the media.
“They missed the very essence of my story, which is spousal abuse and sexual assault,” she said. In recent years, Gallo has dedicated more time to advocating for victims of abuse, founding a charity in 2008 called the Lorena Gallo Foundation.
But she stayed largely silent on “her side” of the infamous story that made her a household name. Inspired by her dismay at U.S. President Donald Trump’s election and the crescendo of the #MeToo movement into a sexual harassment reckoning, she decided to let documentarian Joshua Rofé tell her story, she told the New York Times. In the four-part Amazon Prime Video docu-series called “Lorena,” produced by “Us” director Jordan Peele, she opens up about her marriage and the trial. CNN critic Brian Lowry called it “a thoughtful, comprehensive look at domestic abuse and how the media covers high-profile stories.”
The ‘90s were a “different time,” Gallo told CTV News Channel. If the trials had happened in the #MeToo era, Gallo believes her ex-husband would have been convicted and the media wouldn’t have been so hard on her.
“I would have been treated differently,” she said, citing a more sympathetic treatment of victims today. But she’s speaking up not just to clear the air, but to educate people about abuse.
“Sadly there are a lot of people who don’t understand the pattern of domestic violence. It’s affecting all of us -- men, women, children,” she said, calling it a “social epidemic.” “The Time’s Up and the ‘Me Too’ movements have helped break the stigma of sexual harassment and sexual assault, but there’s a lot of work to be done.”
