Lorena and John Wayne Bobbitt

After Lorenna Bobbitt’s husband John sexually assaulted her at their home in Virginia in the summer of 1993, she retaliated by waiting until he was asleep, she decided to fight back. Following the attack, Lorena fled the house in her car and eventually pulled over to the side of the road to call 911 and report the incident, at which time she was arrested. Though salacious, this incident of domestic violence would likely have gone unnoticed by the rest of the American public; however, at the time, debates about domestic violence and marital rape were raging and the Bobbitt case came to serve as an example of the consequences and effects of that violence, for arguments on both sides. As a result, the Bobbitt case became one of the most high-profile criminal cases in the country—and then it became a national joke.