THE WOMAN who captured the imagination of America and the world with a swift flick of a kitchen knife was acquitted last night of maliciously wounding her husband by chopping off his penis ╤ then was promptly sent to a mental hospital.
Lorena Bobbitt was placed in the custody of a Virginia institution for 45 days after a jury of seven women and five men found her not guilty ╥by reason of insanity╙.
After more than six hours of deliberation, the jury accepted Mrs Bobbitt╒s claim that years of forced sex, beatings and taunts by her husband left her with an irresistible impulse to take a 12-inch knife to his groin. The 24-year-old manicurist never denied severing John Wayne Bobbitt╒s penis while he lay sleeping after a late-night bar crawl. She pleaded that she acted in a moment of temporary insanity that only ended when she threw the dismembered member from her car window.
A police search later recovered the organ on wasteland. It was reattached in a nine-hour feat of micro-vascular surgery. Doctors testified that Mr Bobbitt╒s penis now works well, but that it has not yet recovered full sexual function.
The battle of the sexes was reflected in offices, on the streets and in bars as soon as the verdict was annnounced. Women cheered while men looked glum. At McGee╒s bar on New York╒s Broadway, one customer, Paul Biagi, grimaced and said: ╥Let╒s face it, she╒ll never get another date.╙
The Bobbitts have one more date with the law, however: they are filing for divorce.
