The trial began on Wednesday for the woman accused of severing her husband's penis and mangling it in the garbage disposal.

The woman, 50-year-old Garden Grove resident, Catherine Kieu is charged with felony torture and aggravated mayhem.

The charges stem from an incident that took place in the home her and her husband shared in early July of 2011. It was then that Kieu laced her husband’s tofu soup with the drug Zolpidem. Shortly afterwards, her husband succumbed to the insomnia drug and went to bed. While he was in the drug-induced slumber, Kieu entered the bedroom and tied her husband up. He awoke to her saying, “You deserve it.” and, using a ten-inch knife, severed his penis.

According to court documents, after the attack, Kieu took the severed member and went to the kitchen, where she placed it in the garbage disposal and turned the grinder on, mangling the penis beyond repair.

After the incident, Kieu called 911 and reported that her husband was bleeding. The husband then got on the phone and reported what had happened. Garden Grove police arrived at the scene and the husband was rushed to the hospital.

Doctors attempted to re-attach the severed member, but were ultimately unsuccessful. It was too badly damaged. The husband underwent subsequent surgery to repair his genitals so that he would be able to urinate.

The reason for the act, according to the deputy district attorney John Christi, was that Kieu was suspicious that her husband had been having an affair with an old girlfriend.

Kieu had previously bugged the house in an attempt to catch her husband cheating. According to the prosecutor, the bugs never revealed that he was. But, it did pick up Kieu’s July attack.

Kieu’s attorney, public defender Frank Bittar, instead, said in court that Kieu suffered a traumatic childhood growing up in war-torn Vietnam and so couldn’t be convicted of the crimes she committed on the grounds that she sufffered from mental illness.

Bittar also stated in court that Kieu’s husband used erectile dysfunction drugs and subjected Kieu to sexual positions that hurt and Kieu was only committed the act to make him stop.

The trial, which began yesterday, is expected to go on for two weeks.