A woman has been imprisoned for 13 years after being found guilty of deliberately cutting off her lover’s penis with a pair of garden shears.
28-year-old Brenda Barattini was convicted of the attempted murder of her 42-year-old lover Sergio Fernandez, following a trial in Cordoba, Argentina.
Barattini reportedly confessed to planning the attack, which took place in November 2017, though she said she never intended to kill her lover.
The 28-year-old revealed how she had plotted to harm Fernandez after he apparently shared a sex tape and X-rated photos of the pair with his friends, according to MailOnline.
She told the jury Fernandez treated her like a ‘trophy’, saying:
He turned me into a sex object. I was just a shag for him.
He infringed my privacy, my life and my career. Everything has been ruined.
According to Fernandez, Barattini put a blindfold on him, pretending it was foreplay before carrying out the attack.
He said:
After she put the blindfold on she told me I had to guess where she was touching me.
She also wanted to tie me up but I didn’t let her. She began to practice oral sex on me. I suddenly felt something. She wanted to kill me in that second.
According to reports, Fernandez was rescued by neighbours who heard shouting and alerted the police. He apparently spent eight days in a coma after the attack, losing ‘around 90 percent’ of his member, as well as a testicle, and has suffered from insomnia and panic attacks since it happened.
The jury’s decision to convict Barattini was unanimous, though her defence lawyer Lucas de Olmos said the decision was ‘unheard of’, saying: ‘No-one has ever been convicted in this country of attempted murder for a penis wound.’
On the night of the incident, Barattini’s ex-boyfriend Gonzalo Rodriguez, who she was still with at the time, is said to have received a phone call from a concerned neighbour saying ‘your girlfriend has been raped’.
He then reportedly rushed to her house, arriving before police, to find ‘a river of blood’. Barattini initially told him Fernandez had attacked her, though according to Rodrigeuz she was waiting with ‘a scalpel or a sharp object’ after he attended to Fernandez.
According to local reports, Rodriguez’s testimony was a key part of having the charges against Barattini changed to ‘attempted homicide’.
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Charlie Cocksedge is a journalist and sub-editor at UNILAD. He graduated from the University of Manchester with an MA in Creative Writing, where he learnt how to write in the third person, before getting his NCTJ. His work has also appeared in such places as The Guardian, PN Review and the bin.