Prosecutors release chilling details about the Sunday night attack, alleging that Deputy Robert A. McClain forced the victims at knifepoint to undress and ordered them to engage in a sex act.

A Los Angeles sheriff's deputy was charged today with torturing and forcibly sexually assaulting his wife and another man after learning that his wife planned to divorce him, authorities said.

Prosecutors released chilling new details about the Sunday night attack, alleging that Deputy Robert A. McClain repeatedly punched and kicked the victims and forced them at knifepoint to undress and ordered them to engage in a sex act. The ordeal, authorities said, spanned nearly nine hours.

At one point, prosecutors said, the deputy ordered his wife to castrate the 23-year-old man. She "fearfully pretended to follow his instructions" and the deputy used the knife to repeatedly slice the young man's face, according to a statement released by the Orange County district attorney's office.

McClain, 34, faces charges of torture, aggravated mayhem and sodomy by force with great bodily injury to a sexual assault victim. If convicted, he faces life in prison, authorities said.

According to prosecutors, the bloody attack occurred about 10 p.m. Sunday when McClain's wife told him she was leaving him for the younger man, whom she met while working at a leasing office in an Irvine apartment complex. After learning this, the deputy had his 31-year-old wife take him to meet the man at his apartment, prosecutors said.

After arriving, the deputy led the victims to a back kitchenette area in the leasing office, where he started to argue with them and physically attack them, authorities said.

"McClain is accused of taking out a knife and forcing both victims to undress," according to the district attorney's statement. McClain also disrobed, authorities said.

"While at knife point, McClain is accused of unsuccessfully ordering [his wife] to orally copulate both him and [the other man]," the statement read. McClain then ordered his wife to castrate the younger man, which she feigned doing, authorities said. The young man did, however, sustain puncture wounds to his groin area, Irvine police said.

After slashing the man's face, prosecutors said, McClain fled the scene, forcing his wife to go with him.

McClain then forcibly sodomized his wife, chopped off her hair with the knife, and ultimately drove her back to their Irvine home, prosecutors allege.

About 5 a.m. Monday, the wife was able to leave the house with her and her husband's four children and drive to a nearby hospital to get treatment, authorities said.

A cleaning crew two hours later discovered the young man in the leasing office and called authorities.

Chris Heflin, the young man's father, told The Times on Tuesday that his son's face was so badly disfigured that he was hardly recognizable. "I know it's him, but his face is just swollen so large I can hardly tell it's him," the father said. He said his son would need surgery for a "complete facial reconstruction."

In conversations before the attack, Heflin said his son had told him he had fallen for a married woman. "He said she was beautiful. I couldn't talk him out of it, and I tried three or four times," he said.

McClain, who also suffered injuries, will be arraigned at the Harbor Justice Center in Newport Beach once the medical treatment he is undergoing is completed, prosecutors said. He is being held in lieu of $1-million bail.

Los Angeles County Sheriff Lee Baca has already announced that McClain, a 10-month probationary deputy, would be fired today.

Richard Winton and Scott Glover