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US Recommends Asylum in ‘Iconic’ Domestic Violence Case

Posted Oct 30, 2009, 06:04 am CST
By Debra Cassens Weiss

The United States has recommended asylum in the closely watched case of a Guatemalan woman fleeing domestic abuse.

Rody Alvarado Peña will likely win asylum because of the U.S. stance, her lawyer, Karen Musalo, told the New York Times. This “has been the iconic case of domestic abuse as a basis for asylum,” said Musalo, director of the Center for Gender and Refugee Studies at the University of California’s Hastings College of Law.

Asylum lawyer Jayne Fleming of Reed Smith in San Francisco told the Times that the recommendation is “a giant step forward.”

Alvarado, who is a housekeeper at a California home for elderly nuns, has claimed her husband had dislocated her jaw in a… Continue reading...



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