News from Lori's Parents

17 June 2000

This is day 1,662 of Lori's wrongful incarceration.

In this update:

Father's Day visit for Mark comes one week early

Mark visited Lori last weekend and was given an extra visit for Father's Day. Although he saw Lori for one hour on both Saturday and Sunday behind the double mesh screens he and Lori were permitted to hug each other in the presence of prison officials at the end of each visit. This was the first "contact" between Mark and Lori in a year.

Lori made Mark a beautiful Father's Day card that will be available on the website. Using a fudge recipe that she requested from Rhoda at the last visit, Lori made Mark chocolate fudge in a plastic container. She used evaporated milk to "draw" Mark's caricature - a bald smile face with mustache and beard and eye glasses - on the fudge. She made the fudge in her cell by melting the chocolate over very hot water that was given to her for this occasion.

On Sunday Lori was permitted to borrow a guitar and she spent the final 20 minutes of the hour visit playing and singing old favorites. The locutorio (i.e., visiting room) may be dark and all concrete but it has excellent acoustics! Lori and Mark sang the Bette Midler late 70s hit "The Rose." Lori then played and sang "Amigo" from El Salvador and three Peruvian songs, two of which were Huayno songs. She then played and sang "Gracias a la Vida" ("Thanks to Life"), composed by the Chilean Violetta Parra, and, at Mark's request, finished with the Pink Floyd hit "Wish You Were Here." As Mark joined Lori in the chorus and sang "wish you were here" he pointed to his side of the room and Lori broke into a big smile. She promised Mark that at his next visit she will play the Peruvian pipe instruments for him.

This was the first time Mark had seen Lori play the guitar and hear her sing since her visit to New York in September 1995, two months before her arrest. Her voice was controlled, and sounded great in the locutorio, but it was painful for him to watch her strum and pick with her swollen and cut purple fingers.

Congressional campaign continues - signatures mount

Thanks to your help, as of yesterday 130 Congressional Representatives and 33 Senators have signed the "Dear Colleague" letters urging President Clinton to secure Lori's release. Please check the website www.freelori.org for the updated lists of signatures to the House and Senate "Dear Colleague" letters. If your Representative or Senators are not yet on these lists please call them again. We will be spending several days in Washington this coming week lobbying for more signatures.

"To be silent in the face of injustice is to be an accomplice to evil. I will not be silent." Lori Berenson, January 2000 - Rhoda and Mark Berenson