If you have spent any time reading any Murdoch publications of late, then you would most likely have heard about the Romanian woman who ripped her husband’s nuts off for failing to do housework. We can assure you that the story is much less exciting than it seems.
Here is the part of the story that is not in dispute:
Thirty-nine-year-old Ionel Popa went home drunk after his employer paid him in wine instead of cash. That night, he whined about the cold and forced his wife Marinela Benea to keep a fire going… all night. When he woke up, she told him to go out and do some work or do some housework. Popa’s response was to tell her that she was not entitled to tell him what to do. She responded by telling him that he was not any kind of man and grabbing his testicles. Popa recoiled and suffered a serious injury.
The nature of the injury is what is in dispute. According to various headlines, Marinela ripped her husband’s testicles off. In actual fact, she only tore open his scrotum. His left testicle was apparently exposed, and might have even been hanging out, but it seems that it was still attached. While Popa’s injury was certainly horrific, having one’s scrotum torn open and having one’s testicles ripped off are totally different things.
Marinela described the situation fairly matter-of-factly:
I told him he was not any kind of man and I grabbed his balls. It was not my fault that he pulled away, and that’s when it happened. I thought maybe that some ice would solve the problem, but he insisted on calling an ambulance. He was pretty annoyed.
