There's crazy, and then there's nuts.

The always classy Philly Daily News puts it this way:

Sac attacker was AWOL from mental hospital

But seriously, folks, our mental health system has been wrecked by those claiming to be filled with compassion for the mentally ill.

A Nicetown woman who tried to tear off her husband's testicles with her bare hands Tuesday had skipped out on a four-hour pass from a mental facility the day she attacked him, her brother said yesterday.

Monica Randolph, 39, was charged with aggravated assault and related offenses for skinning the scrotum of her husband Howard, 52. His genitals suffered severe wounds that required stitching, an overnight hospital stay and a lot of morphine.

"They asked me to describe the pain between one and 10," Randolph said yesterday. "I said 20. I honestly don't think I could have gotten through this without the morphine."

Monica Randolph's brother, George Meade, said yesterday that the case is more complicated than it appears and represents a failure of the city's mental-health system.

"We have tried to get her help for years. She would pull some stunt, and they would 302 her [commit involuntarily to mental- treatment facilities] sometimes and keep her for a few days, but other times they'd send her home," said Meade, 31, of Mount Airy. "It's like you almost have to do a major crime to get help. Now my sister might get the help she needs, but more than likely she's going to prison, and that's a shame."

Randolph said his wife has never received the treatment she needed.

"It's like every six months, the people trying to help you all change," he said. "One day you go for treatment, and everyone is a stranger."

Meade, a mental-health worker at Graterford state prison, said his sister has suffered from bipolar disorder since she was about 19.

Her mental problems prompted her to drop out of Cheyney University and led to a life of paranoia, volatile relationships and criminal troubles, he said.

She tended to go off her medication when she felt better, prompting relapses that would turn her into "a monster," Meade said. Before pulverizing her husband's privates, (Read that sentence again, kiddies, and then substitute "pulverizing his wife's pudenda". It's not quite as funny, is it? - F.G.) her most serious run-in with police was in 2003, when she barricaded herself in her mother's home, he added.

She was involuntarily committed to a residential psychiatric- treatment program about a month ago, Meade said, adding that he did not know the circumstances of her placement.

Police and city mental-health officials declined to confirm Monica Randolph's psychiatric commitment, citing medical-confidentiality laws.

Her mother got permission Tuesday to take her out on a four-hour pass to get a new driver's license, Randolph said.

But when the pair stopped by her apartment, Howard Randolph said he refused to let her return to the mental facility.

That night, Monica Randolph sneaked up on her husband as he slept and grabbed his groin, ripping into his gonads with her fingernails and ending her attack only after he fled the house and locked her inside.

She told arresting officers that she attacked her husband because he was having an affair. Her frequent absences for mental-health treatment stoked her distrust in her husband, who she felt cheated on her while she was gone, Meade said.

Randolph said he had not cheated on his wife.

Meade said the couple's relationship has been marked by mutual physical abuse.

"He did not deserve what happened to him; I'm not taking my sister's back on this," Meade said. "But he is not innocent. He beat my sister up plenty of times, and my sister beat him up, too."

Howard Randolph spent yesterday recovering at home, but he denied that he had beaten his wife.

"The only time I ever hit my wife was the other day to get her to let go of my balls," he said.

Other times when they fought, he said he would just grab and hold her until she calmed down. He said he has never been arrested for abusing her.

News of his injuries prompted lively chatter on local radio stations yesterday and a flood of e-mails and phone calls to the Daily News.

Many male readers spouted outrage that such an attack on a woman wouldn't result in tongue-in-cheek headlines and double entendres.

Yep.

"The double standard in this country when it comes to sexual abuse sickens me," reader Joe Shields wrote.

Others were more appreciative.

"Your story was classic. I have forwarded it to many people. You brightened my otherwise aggravating day," wrote one male reader.

Har dee har har har.