Hello and thank you for downloading Witness from the BBC World Service with me Ashley Byrne.

Today we're going back to the early 1990s and a crime which shocked the world.

On June the 23rd 1993, Lorena Bobbitt's sliced off her husband John Wayne Bobbitt's penis

in a frenzied attack at their suburban home in the United States.

The crime attracted immediate media attention and the couple became

global names virtually overnight.

This is surely a bizarre case. Everybody treats it as one big bordy joke. Yet a man has been seriously mutilated

by a woman who says he physically and sexually abused her.

Now that is not funny.

Suddenly the issue of domestic violence

was a major talking point on chat shows around the world.

Do you think that ever in this country we would argue what Lorena Bobbitt is arguing that was that she was provoked to that sort of act and it was therefore justified?

Well it's the only argument that a woman can actually use in terms of what is claimed here

of domestic violence because unless you say you were deranged at the time...

The events which made John and Lorena Bobbitt how... unless you say you were deranged at the time.

The events which made John and Lorena Bobbitt household names happened at John Bobbitt's

apartment near Manassas Park in Virginia.

I've been speaking to John's attorney Greg Murphy.

They had separated.

They decided they were going to divorce.

Robbie, his friend, came down to live with him.

She came back for one night more and spent the night with John.

...