Lori Berenson May Be Lesson for Amanda Knox
After 14 years, U.S. does little to free NYC woman still in Peru jail.
Dec. 8, 2009— -- For more than a decade, New Yorker Lori Berenson has lingered in stark prisons in Peru -- 3,629 miles from her family.
At the age of 27, she was sentenced by a hooded military tribunal to 20 years in prison for consorting with left-wing rebels.
Despite desperate appeals by her parents, vows that they would not abandon her until she is brought home, and intervention by the U.S. State Department and two American presidents, Berenson has been in prison so long she has created an entire life for herself.
She has married a fellow prisoner, and this year gave birth to a baby at the age of 40.
"I think what was hardest for me was the knowledge that she was being unjustly deprived of living fully in the prime years of her life," said her mother, New York University physics professor Rhoda Berenson.
Now the parents of Amanda Knox -- the Seattle college student who was convicted in Italy last week of murdering her British roommate -- are hoping that legal appeals and the State Department will prevent their 22-year-old daughter from serving out the 26 year prison sentence imposed by the Italian court.
If Knox serves her entire sentence, she would come out of prison at the age of 46.
Sen. Maria Cantwell, D-Wash., has made an appeal to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on behalf of the Knox family, but Clinton has not committed to taking up the case. "I stand ready to meet with anyone who wishes to discuss this case further," Clinton said Monday, hardly a battle cry.
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The Knox family has much to learn from the Berensons. Both families estimate they have spent more an $1 million on legal and travel fees to defend and support their daughters. And both families have been consumed by worrying about their daughters' medical and emotional well-being.
