Story By: Alex Cope, Sub Editor: Joseph Golder, Agency: Central European News
The woman accused of cutting off her boyfriend’s penis off with a pair of garden shears has had the charges against her upped to attempted murder after the victim and another ex-boyfriend testified.
Brenda Barattini, 27, was arrested in November 2017 in the city of Cordoba in north-central Argentina for using the garden tools to cut off the penis of her then-lover, named in reports as Sergio F., 40 years old at the time.
She was initially charged with “causing severe injuries” but prosecutors have now successfully convinced a court to change the charge to “attempted homicide.”
Pictures Credit: CEN
Sergio F. was reportedly married at the time of the incident but was having an affair with Barattini. He reportedly told the court: “We started to have sex and she told me she was going to give me a little surprise. She put a mask on me, velvet one.
“After that, she told me to guess what she was touching me with. She also wanted to tie me up, but I didn’t want her to. She started to perform oral sex on me. Suddenly I felt something. She wanted to kill me in that second.”
Barattini is said to have cut the victim’s genitals off with a pair of scissors and he is said to have told the court: “I felt like I was going to die, I didn’t know she had cut me. I couldn’t see anything. I tried to get up, I pulled up my trousers and instinctively grabbed by mobile phone to call an ambulance. I wanted to leave and she started to insult me. She grabbed my t-shirt, my hair, she wouldn’t let me leave.”
Local media report prosecutor Laura Battistelli worked to have the charges changed from “causing severe injuries” to “attempted homicide” as prosecutors believe the attack was pre-meditated.
Prosecutors claim the suspect had searched for how to cut off genitals on the Internet and had written a diary entry detailing what was going to happen that day.
And her ex-boyfriend Gonzalo Rodriguez, who she was reportedly still with at the time, testified in court saying that he had received a call on the night of the incident from a neighbour saying “your girlfriend has been raped”.
He says he then rushed to her house before the police or ambulance arrived and found a “river of blood”. He reportedly told the court: “She was semi-nude. I don’t know if she had her bra on but she was in her knickers. I asked her what had happened and she said he had come to look for a battery and that he had raped her.”
“I shouted at Sergio F. ‘what did you do!”. He didn’t answer. I went back to Brenda and she was waiting for me with a scalpel or a sharp object. She said to me: ‘Kill him, kill that son of a b*tch!”
Reports suggest Rodriguez’s testimony was key in having the charges changed to attempted homicide.
Local media report Barattini is believed to have carried out the attack as revenge because her lover had sent videos of the pair having sex to his friends without her consent.
The trial is ongoing.
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