Now that Rifqa Bary, the 17-year-old Christian girl who fled her Muslim parents because she feared her father would kill her, has been sent back to Ohio, supporters of the girl are greatly concerned about her safety.
One reason is that the state’s Franklin County Children Services has restricted the girl’s use of her cell phone and Internet. The Internet, in particular her Facebook activities, a spokesman for the agency avers, led to her leaving Ohio for Florida, where she found safe harbor with a Christian couple with whom she was acquainted through the social networking site. As the Associated Press reported, “Jim Zorn, an agency attorney, says Bary’s use of Facebook was one issue that led to the girl’s situation.” Said Zorn, “What we want to restrict is the other people, the other organizations, the other forces, that have interjected themselves into this case inappropriately, and has caused the additional problems that we’ve seen.”
That falsehood accepts her Muslim parents’ contention that Rifqa was “brainwashed” by Christians and lured to Florida.
As reported in this space over the last several weeks, Rifqa left Ohio because she feared her father would kill her. Rifqa converted to Christianity, a grave crime for a Muslim. Once there, she took up with the Christian couple and came to national attention. Rifqa says her father routinely brutalized her, once for merely speaking too loudly, but his main concern was her conversion. “You’re dead to me,” he told his daughter, because she rejected Allah for Jesus Christ. Rifqa fears she will become one of the many victims of honor killing. Islam prescribes death for apostates.
The judge handling her case in Florida released Rifqa for return to her home state because her father made a deal with Rifqa’s attorney to turn over his immigration papers and avoid a contempt of court citation. The Barys refused several entreaties from the judge to produce their papers. The Barys are illegal immigrants who supposedly came to the United States to get treatment for Rifqa’s right eye. Rifqa says she never got the treatment. But after the judge released the girl, writes Pamela Geller at her Atlas Shrugged Web site, the Barys reneged on the deal.
A friend of Rifqa’s reported what happened:
Because Rifqa’s parents are in the U.S. illegally, they refused and defied numerous court orders to produce documents detailing their immigration status. As a result, Rifqa’s parents were in danger of being arrested for contempt of court. The Florida judge who had emergency jurisdiction over the case said that even though the jurisdiction is transferred to Ohio, he was not going to release her until they produced the proper documentation that satisfied the court.
Well, in order to have the immigration issue go away for Rifqa’s parents, Mohammad Bary’s attorney, David Colley, cut a ‘behind the scenes’ deal in which the Florida court would drop the contempt of court issue regarding their immigration situation in exchange for an assurance that they would leave Rifqa alone and let her stay in foster care for the next 9 months until she is 18. This sounded like it was too good to be true, and it was! As soon as Rifqa was transferred into Ohio custody and the Florida court gave up their emergency jurisdiction over Rifqa and the immigration issue, Rifqa’s parents fired their own attorney that made the deal! Simply put, now that Rifqa was in ‘favorable’ hands in Ohio, all deals are off!
So now, Rifqa’s parents have what they want. She is back in Ohio, cut off from any meaningful contact with anyone other than the county’s child bureaucrats, who believe Facebook, not the fanatical Islam of Rifqa’s father, led to her flight from virtual captivity
An official with the county children‘s agency, the Columbus Dipatch reported, “said he has no reason to believe Rifqa wouldn’t be safe with her parents.”
Photo of Rifqa Bary: AP Images
