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Kitchen knife (symbolic image)
Photo: Richard Drury/Getty Images
Brutal end to a couple's argument shortly before Valentine's Day: The authorities in Peru are investigating a woman who is said to have cut off her partner's penis with a kitchen knife while he was sleeping. The AFP news agency learned from medical circles on Tuesday that the man had suffered "a traumatic amputation" and had received medical care and was receiving psychiatric care.
The 39-year-old was not arrested because she had to look after the couple's three-month-old child, said the local public prosecutor's office in Chota in the north of the country. The results of the reports would be awaited to determine the motive and circumstances.
Local media, citing police, reported that the 39-year-old had an argument with her partner over the weekend after he came home drunk. She believed he had been unfaithful to her.
After the argument, the man fell asleep, whereupon the woman grabbed the kitchen knife and cut off her partner's penis. "We are shocked, we want justice," the man's uncle told local media.
Memories of the Bobbitt case
The crime is reminiscent of the infamous 1993 case of John Wayne Bobbitt, then 26, in the United States, whose wife Lorena cut off his penis while he was sleeping. She had explained: "The act was like rape; he abused me." The case had sparked a debate in the USA at the time about sexual violence in marriage and relationships.
The limb was sewn back on to ex-Marine Bobbitt. Bobbitt used the media attention to make a name for himself with feigned bravado. As SPIEGEL reported at the time, his face adorned beer can coolers, and America's frustrated machos celebrated Bobbitt as a gorgeous guy on "The Beef Strikes Back" T-shirts. He later became a porn actor and then a priest.