Ohio runaway says she fears for life after converting to Christianity

By Michael Kruse, Times Staff Writer
In Print: Friday, August 21, 2009
 

Mohamed Bary and his wife, Aysha, with their son Rilvan, say they don't want to kill their daughter for converting to Christianity. "It's completely false," Mohamed Bary said.

ORLANDO — The thin girl looked into the TV camera on Aug. 10. It was her 17th birthday. She said she had fled from her family in Ohio. Now she was in a pastor's arms in the pastor's home here in Florida.



"Um, well, I, I'm a Christian," Rifqa Bary began, "and my parents are Muslim, they're extremely devout, and they can't know about my faith — well, um, they do now, but, um, they've threatened to kill me."


Some saw a new believer in Jesus Christ pleading for her life. Others saw a brainwashed teen parroting radical evangelicals.


Before the interview, this was a story of a missing person, of great interest to her family, her friends and the authorities looking for her. After the interview, though, Rifqa Bary became much more than that: a contested prize in a culture war.


The pastor's name is Blake Lorenz, he's the leader of a new church called Global Revolution, and here's what he said this week:


"These are the last days, these are the end times, and this conflict between Islam and Christianity is going to grow greater. This conflict between good and evil is going to grow greater."


Craig McCarthy, the court-appointed attorney for Rifqa's mother, sat the other day in the courthouse where this afternoon there will be a hearing in which a judge will decide what to do with Rifqa. He shook his head.


"This case," he said, "is about this family."


Rifqa's parents say they don't want to kill her. "It is completely false," Mohamed Bary said in a brief TV interview.


They're stressed, McCarthy said, and they have many questions — but one more than any other:



"How does their daughter end up halfway across the country in some preacher's arms?"


Mohamed and Aysha Bary saw their daughter, an honor student and a cheerleader, in the wee hours of July 19. She was gone in the morning. Her father called the Columbus Police Department later in the day to report her missing.


The police put out a national alert. They sent a picture of Rifqa to local papers and TV stations. They tried to monitor her computer and cell phone activity. Nothing.


It was that way for a week. Then two.


"It was as if she disappeared completely," Columbus detective Jerry Cupp said this week.


Down here, though, at least one group of people knew exactly where she was. Inside the four-bedroom home at 3825 Crescent Park Blvd., where Blake and Beverly Lorenz live with their three kids, who are 20, 24 and 25, Rifqa was staying up late to pray, sleeping into the early afternoons and eating Chick-fil-A.


Blake and Beverly met in church in Winter Park and married nearly 30 years ago. They co-pastor Global Revolution.



The congregation meets on Sunday mornings in Theater 10 in a movie megaplex not far from the Magic Kingdom. The language of last Sunday's service was of "prayer warriors" engaged in a struggle. Two words kept popping up: "the enemy."


Beverly Lorenz heard about Rifqa months ago from friends on Facebook who gathered at a group called the United States of Prayer. Rifqa was known as the girl from Ohio who converted to Christianity and was having a hard time with her parents.


In the spring and early summer, Beverly Lorenz sent Rifqa "seven or eight" Facebook messages, she said, telling the girl that she was praying for her.


In early July, she got up in the middle of the night to pray, she said, and saw Rifqa online, and sent her a message. She got a message back: Call me. They talked for 15 minutes.
"I was quoting Scripture," Beverly Lorenz said this week, "and just really speaking the word to her."



The next time Beverly Lorenz heard from Rifqa she was on a bus. She was coming to Orlando. It was July 21.


The Lorenzes sent some friends to pick her up at the bus station. Sitting in the family room, she looked like "a timid, scared little rabbit," Beverly Lorenz said.


Rifqa said that at home she had to read her Bible under the covers and that her dad had threatened to kill her to preserve the family's honor.


"The Koran does state that if somebody leaves their religion they will be killed," Beverly Lorenz said.


The Koran is like the Bible, or the Torah, or any other ancient, important religious text: Different passages are interpreted differently for different purposes.


But its "overarching principle," said M. Cherif Bassiouni, an Islamic scholar at DePaul University, comes in Chapter 2: "There can be no compulsion in religion."



Still, according to a United Nations estimate, there are as many as 5,000 "honor killings" a year worldwide. But killings in this country that some have called honor killings are prosecuted as what they are: murders.


"She really believes she'll be killed," Blake Lorenz said, "and we do, too."


He said he thinks he asked Rifqa if she wanted to call her parents. He said she said no.


The first time Blake Lorenz called the state Department of Children and Families was July 29 at 3:02 p.m. He says he asked them what would happen in a situation like this and that he was told she probably would be taken back home.


DCF says he was given numbers for the Orlando police. He says they asked him for his name and address and that he gave it. DCF says he did not. They agree on this, though: They asked him for the name of the girl, and he didn't give it.


On July 31 a story ran on TV in Ohio. Rifqa Bary: still missing.


Six days passed until DCF got a second call about Rifqa. Blake Lorenz says it was him.


He made allegations of child abuse in Ohio and said the girl was a runaway. This led to a chain of phone calls from Orlando to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children to the Columbus police and back to the Orlando police. They went to the house on Aug. 7.


The officer took Rifqa to the Juvenile Assessment Center. He asked her questions. She refused to answer them.


The next morning, a Saturday, there was an emergency shelter hearing. A judge scheduled a full hearing for Monday morning — Aug. 10 — and ordered that until then Rifqa be put in a DCF shelter after a positive home study with a "suitable relative."


For some reason, a home study was done at the Lorenzes' house and she was left there.


DCF spokeswoman Carrie Hoeppner called it a "mistake" and said the investigator was "confused."


Two days later DCF reversed course. A supervisor wrote a note: "Home study was approved prior to being informed that the pastor's family was involved with possibly helping the child run away from Ohio."


The Lorenzes, the note said, "are not appropriate placement."



"We did not lure her down," Blake Lorenz said.


The hearing on the morning of Aug. 10 was postponed until that afternoon. In between those two times is when the local TV station came to the Lorenzes' home and taped the seven-minute interview with Rifqa. Blake Lorenz says his attorney told him to call TV.


This is how Rifqa ended up on TV, and then on YouTube, and then all over the world, saying her father was going to kill her.


Blake and Beverly Lorenz pray the judge keeps her in Florida.


But the case most likely will go back to Ohio. Rifqa's parents have already agreed for her to go to a foster home in Ohio for at least 30 days.


Family court is sometimes a clumsy way to fix messy situations, but the goal in cases like this is constant: to put families back together, as long as it's safe.


Times researcher Shirl Kennedy contributed to this report. Michael Kruse can be reached at mkruse@sptimes.com or (727)893-8751.

Rifqa Bary Latest Updates: No credible reports of threats toward Rifqa, FDLE says

Amy L. Edwards and Rene Stutzman

Sentinel Staff Writers


7:49 p.m. EDT, September 14, 2009



In an investigative report unsealed today, FDLE did not discover any threats toward Rifqa Bary or her family in Ohio.

Although officials in two states have yet to prove it, Fathima Rifqa Bary told investigators she would become the victim of an "honor killing" because of her conversion to Christianity.



The Ohio teen had planned locations thousands of miles away from her home -- known as "fire drills" -- where she could seek refuge. Orlando was her "primary planned sanctuary," and that's exactly where Rifqa ended up in July.


Those were among the details of a Florida Department of Law Enforcement report that said investigators found no credible reports of threats toward the 17-year-old runaway. The report was unsealed Monday. Rifqa's taped interview with investigators remains sealed.


" . . . FDLE's inquiry to date has failed to reveal any evidence of a conspiracy to commit, solicitation to commit, attempt or other efforts to commit any such action or other violence against her," the report said.


FDLE's seven-page investigative summary includes interviews with Ohio school officials; with Rifqa's father, who has denied threatening his daughter; and with Brian M. Williams, a 23-year-old with ties to Columbus and Kansas City, Mo.




Williams baptized Rifqa and helped her get to Florida, according to the report.


The Islamic community was not investigated. Investigators checked with local, state and federal authorities in Columbus and Orlando and "have not been made aware of any identifiable threat."


Rifqa made international headlines after she ran away from her home near Columbus, Ohio, in mid-July, took a Greyhound bus to Florida and sought shelter with an Orlando family.


Rifqa, 17, has said she left Ohio because she feared she would be hurt or killed by her Muslim family because she converted to Christianity. She stayed with longtime Central Florida pastors Blake and Beverly Lorenz for more than two weeks before a judge placed her in state foster care, where she remains.


Other than her father, Rifqa did not identify anyone who have verbally or physically threatened her with death, the report said.



Also in the report:


-- Rifqa told investigators she had been abused by her father throughout her childhood, but her parents and older brother denied such allegations or using any harsh punishment. An Ohio school official told investigators the district had no records of alleged abuse.


-- Rifqa told investigators a high school teacher offered to let her stay at her house if Rifqa "needed to escape repercussions from her family due to her Christian religious beliefs." Investigators questioned the teacher, Debbie Crump, who told them she wasn't aware of any danger toward Rifqa. The teacher said she made the offer to Rifqa because her brother was having parties at the house when the Barys were out of town and the teacher was concerned for Rifqa's safety in that environment.


-- Rifqa may not have hitchhiked to a bus station on July 20. That's what she told investigators, but Williams told them he picked her up from a residence and drove her to the station. Rifqa's bus ticket was purchased in Orlando under a fictitious name. The report does not say who purchased it.


Reached recently by the Sentinel, Williams said he couldn't talk because he was already overextended on his cell phone minutes. Williams has not responded to multiple e-mails, Internet or telephone messages seeking comment.


Meanwhile, the Lorenzes' spiritual journey has taken a new path in Orlando.



A schism in their evangelical congregation, Global Revolution Church, led to them being banned from meeting in the movie theater that had been the church home. They abandoned -- voluntarily, they said -- the church name.


On Sunday, the Lorenzes and about 60 adults worshiped in an unair-conditioned warehouse in south Orange County. One of their music leaders set her keyboard atop a sawhorse. An audio-visual team propped a projector on a 10-foot ladder, secured by a piece of wood and a C-clamp.


Still, the Lorenzes preached, and the congregation prayed, sang and praised Jesus together.


Amy L. Edwards can be reached at aledwards@orlandosentinel.com or 407-420-5735. Rene Stutzman can be reached at rstutzman@orlandosentinel.com or 407-650-6394.


Copyright © 2009, Orlando Sentinel

Rifqa Bary to stay in Florida; family files complaint against Orlando pastors

Amy L. Edwards and Sarah Lundy

Sentinel Staff Writers


8:19 p.m. EDT, September 21, 2009


The legal battle over teen runaway Fathima Rifqa Bary will continue Tuesday in an Ohio courtroom after an Orlando hearing Monday brought more questions than resolutions.



Orange Circuit Judge Daniel Dawson did nothing to change the custody of the 17-year-old who is living with a foster family near Orlando and said he planned to talk to an Ohio judge to find out if there is a legitimate custody action in that state.


If so, Dawson would need to determine if and how long Florida's emergency jurisdiction should remain.


Meanwhile, Rifqa's father stepped up a strategy to bring his daughter back to Ohio. Mohamed Bary filed a criminal complaint against the Orlando pastors who helped shelter Rifqa for more than two weeks before the state intervened.


Lawyer Shayan Elahi told the Orange County court that Rifqa's parents, Mohamed and Aysha Bary filed a complaint about Blake and Beverly Lorenz with law enforcement officials.


A letter sent to Orlando police by Mohamed Bary claimed Rifqa was "indoctrinated and coerced" by representatives of Global Revolution Church and "was hidden" by the Lorenzes. Orlando police said they are not investigating.


An FDLE spokeswoman confirmed the agency received a complaint against the Lorenzes, but she could not comment further.


Rifqa made national headlines when she ran away from her home near Columbus, Ohio, took a bus to Central Florida and sought shelter with the Lorenzes in July. She spent more than two weeks with the family until Aug. 10 when she was placed into state foster care, where she remains.


The teen said she feared her Muslim family would harm or kill her because of her conversion to Christianity.


Rifqa's family has denied any wrongdoing, and investigators in Ohio and Florida have not found evidence supporting Rifqa's claims.


The pastors, who have served in the ministry in Central Florida for more than 25 years, met Rifqa through a prayer group on the Internet social networking site Facebook.


A Florida statute makes it unlawful to shelter an unmarried minor for more than 24 hours without the consent of their parent or guardian, or without notifying a law-enforcement officer of the child's name. A violation of that law is a misdemeanor.


Mat Staver, the Lorenzes lawyer and longtime friend, said there is "no solid basis for the complaint" filed against them.



He said the Lorenzes did what any person would do given the circumstances. Staver said the Lorenzes took multiple steps to notify authorities.


The Lorenzes were questioned as part of FDLE's earlier inquiry into the alleged threats made against Rifqa by her family, Staver said. They have not been questioned since.


The pastors were already forbidden from visiting Rifqa in foster care. Dawson added their adult children to the ban in light of any criminal inquiry.


Rifqa used Monday's hearing to peruse a Bible. Other than stating her name, she did not speak.


Her parents listened to the hearing by phone.


In recent weeks, the Barys launched a new strategy to get their daughter back to their home near Columbus and placed in Ohio's foster care system. Mohamed Bary's filing, asking a judge to declare his daughter incorrigible for repeatedly being disobedient, is one case there.


Another hearing is scheduled in juvenile court this morning in Columbus, Ohio, to address the issue. Criminal attorney Kort Gatterdam, who is representing Rifqa in Ohio, said he will respond to the complaint and plans to file something in court in the morning. He wouldn't give details about what he's going to file.


Rifqa's Guardian Ad Litem, Krista Bartholomew, said in court today that she has "grave concerns" that the Ohio case would be dismissed as soon as Rifqa is sent back there.


The Barys also filed a dependency petition against themselves in juvenile court in Ohio, Elahi said. The next hearing in that case is Oct. 27. Roger Weeden, the attorney for Aysha Bary, said the Ohio court has accepted jurisdiction and argued that all of the witnesses in Rifqa's case, from relatives to teachers, are there.



Rifqa's Florida case is set for mediation Oct. 9. Another proceeding in juvenile court is Oct. 13.


Also today, Dawson kept sealed FDLE's interview of Rifqa. The judge said he wanted to read a transcript of the interview before deciding to remove the seal.


Amy L. Edwards can be reached at aledwards@orlandosentinel.com or 407-420-5735. Sarah Lundy can be reached at slundy@orlandosentinel.com or 407-420-6218.

Copyright © 2009, Orlando Sentinel

Fathima Rifqa Bary: Orlando pastors that let Fathima Rifqa Bary into their home 'reorganizing' church

Amy L. Edwards, Sentinel Staff Writer
3:50 p.m. EDT, September 9, 2009


Blake and Beverly Lorenz comforted teenage Christian convert Fathima Rifqa Bary but are no longer associated with Global Revolution Church. They're not saying what prompted the change.

The pastors who made national headlines after taking in a teen Muslim-to-Christian convert from Ohio are reorganizing their Orlando church.



What that means isn't clear, though pastor Blake Lorenz is upbeat.


"The lawyers are trying to figure out which way it's going to go," he said. "It's not like a negative thing. We're having to reorganize and restructure." He wouldn't say why.


Pastors Beverly and Blake Lorenz took in teen convert Fathima Rifqa Bary after she ran away from her parents, saying her life was in danger because she converted -- a claim her family denies.


The Lorenzes helped start Global Revolution Church in October after spending more than 15 years at Pine Castle United Methodist Church, located south of downtown Orlando on Orange Avenue. Global Revolution has been meeting in a theater inside the Cinemark at Festival Bay.


Blake Lorenz said his church will get a different name and a new meeting spot but it will still have the same congregation. He would not say what prompted the change.


"The church is still going great," he said. "We're still pastoring. We're doing great. It's really good."


Attempts to reach the church's corporate officers have been unsuccessful.


"I hesitate to say anything," Lorenz said during the phone interview this morning.

The Christian Runaway By Arian Campo-Flores | Newsweek Web Exclusive

Updated: 6:26 p.m. ET Sep 9, 2009



High-school student Rifqa Bary says her conversion to Christianity threatened her life. Her Muslim parents say they just want their daughter back—no matter what faith she practices.

Family torn apart: Aysha and Mohamed Bary (left) speak to reporters in Columbus, Ohio, on Aug. 13. Rifqa Bary gets a hug from her caseworker Maxine Kisimbi (right) during a hearing in Orlando on Sept. 3.

Brian Williams wasn't sure what to make of his young friend's stories. He'd met Rifqa Bary, a high-school student from Gahanna, Ohio, at a prayer house at Ohio State University late last year. Intensely devout and deeply inquisitive, she recounted that she came from a Muslim family but had converted to Christianity. This had enraged her parents, who threatened her with violence, she said. She had to hide her faith, conceal her Bible, and sneak away to attend church. According to Williams, a nondenominational minister, she researched the persecution of Christians around the world obsessively and lived in constant fear that her parents would kill her for apostasy. At first "I didn't believe her, to be honest," says Williams. "Maybe she's just young and overemotional," he thought.

But Bary spoke with such conviction that she eventually convinced Williams. And when she ran away from home and fled to Orlando in July, claiming she was in danger of falling victim to an "honor killing," it seemed like all the more reason to trust that she was telling the truth. Why else would she uproot her life that way? Nevertheless, three separate investigations—two by authorities in Ohio and one by law enforcement in Florida—have found no reason to believe that her allegations are true or her life is imperiled. Her parents vehemently deny all the accusations she has made against them and say they have no issue with her being a Christian. Yet Bary continues to maintain that if she's returned to Ohio, she'll be murdered.


The dispute is now the subject of a rancorous legal battle in Florida family court. It's up to a judge to sort through the facts and determine what's best for Bary, 17, who's living with a foster family in Orlando. But that won't be easy. Her case has spilled far beyond the courtroom walls and escalated into a virulent religious clash. She's being represented by John Stemberger, a conservative Christian lawyer who was involved in the battle over Terri Schiavo, the Florida woman kept alive with a feeding tube until it was disconnected in 2005. He and various right-wing groups have unleashed a barrage of allegations against Bary's parents and a mosque they attend in Columbus, Ohio. Yet as Krista Bartholomew, Bary's guardian ad litem (appointed by the court to offer guidance on the girl's best interests), said in a hearing last Thursday, "This is not a holy war. This is a case about a frightened little girl and a broken family."


Mohamed and Aysha Bary left Sri Lanka in 2000 with their two kids, Rifqa and an older brother, and moved to New York (their third child, a boy, was born in the United States). The reason: concern about Rifqa's well-being. As a child, she'd fallen on a toy airplane that pierced her right eye. Doctors in Sri Lanka wanted to remove the eye, prompting Mohamed to relocate the whole family so Rifqa could obtain better medical treatment. In the end, her eye was spared, though she can't see out of it. Then, in 2004, Mohamed moved the family again, this time to seek a better public education for the kids. He settled on the Columbus area, which had highly ranked schools. At New Albany High School, Rifqa excelled. She maintained a 3.5 grade-point average and became a member of the cheerleading squad. Mohamed "is so proud of his children," says Gary Abbott, his closest friend in the U.S. (and a Christian). "He values them more than his own life."



Soon after arriving in Ohio, Rifqa began exploring Christianity. (Though the Barys raised their kids Muslim, Mohamed says the family didn't attend mosque regularly, due to his travel schedule as a gem dealer.) According to Jamal Jivanjee, a Muslim-to-Christian convert who later befriended Rifqa (and now lives in Nashville), she first learned about Jesus Christ from a girl in junior high who shared Scripture with her. The idea that "you could have a relationship with God was a very attractive concept to her," says Jivanjee. In 2005, Rifqa became a Christian at Korean United Methodist Church in Columbus, according to an affidavit filed by her lawyer. With time, she became more fervent about her beliefs. Williams says she regularly attended prayer groups and participated in pro-life gatherings at abortion clinics. She also connected with fellow believers online, through religious groups like the United States of Prayer on Facebook. "The Internet became her church," says Williams, who calls Bary "by far the most passionate Christian I think I've ever met."


Bary's claims about her parents' hostility to her new religion date back at least a year. In an August 2008 e-mail to Jivanjee, she described her parents as "very devoted Muslims" and wrote that after accepting Jesus at the age of 13, "of course I couldn't tell them. Where would I live and go?" Noting that Jivanjee was also a convert, she asked, "How were you able to handle the persecution?" In her affidavit, Bary contends that her father forced her to attend youth gatherings every Saturday at the Noor Islamic Cultural Center in Dublin, Ohio (though the center says its records show she attended only three classes there in 2007). Mohamed, a polite, mild-mannered man who seems deeply pained by the acrimony, responds that all this is nonsense. He and his wife learned that Rifqa considered herself a Christian when she was 14, he says, and though they would have preferred she remain Muslim, "we did not make a big fuss about it." Plus, he points out, if they were indeed such fanatics, why would they have let their daughter prance around as a cheerleader?


Mohamed says Rifqa's behavior began to change more markedly at the beginning of this summer. She became withdrawn, barely speaking to him when they drove places together. She rejected the company of her little brother, with whom she'd always been affectionate. She would stay up late, reading her Bible on the balcony. Aysha also found books in the girl's room that she found troubling, like Is the Injeel Corrupted? (Its author, Fouad Masri, believes that "radical Islam is a reflection of a spiritual thirst that can only be quenched through the teachings and the life of Christ," according to one of his press releases.) Moreover, Rifqa was constantly on Facebook, interacting with people her parents had no clue about. "We were worried," says Mohamed.


Rifqa's religious zeal seems to have intensified during this period. She asked Williams, who was licensed at the nondenominational All Nations Church earlier this year, to baptize her, and he agreed. So one afternoon in late June, he says, they held a ceremony at Hoover Dam Recreation Area in Columbus that was attended by a few dozen of her friends and acquaintances. Bary and Williams waded into the lake, and she shared testimony about how she came to know Jesus and prayed that her family would become Christians as well. Then she was immersed.



Around this time, according to Williams, Bary became convinced that she had to prepare to flee. He says she reached out to folks on Facebook and heard back from at least six or seven who volunteered to take her in. The final impetus for her escape apparently came from two episodes she recounts in her affidavit. First, she maintains that her father confronted her about her Christianity. "If you have this Jesus in your heart, you are dead to me!" she says he yelled at her. "I will kill you!" (Mohamed emphatically denies this.) Then, she alleges, her mother discovered a Christian book in her bedroom, burst into tears, and told Rifqa she would "have to be sent back to Sri Lanka to be dealt with." (Mohamed says Aysha reprimanded the girl for coming home late one night and made a comment along the lines of "We came here for your education. If it goes on like this, we'll all have to go back to Sri Lanka.") Around July 17 or 18, Jivanjee received an e-mail from Bary. "The day has come that I dreaded," she wrote. "I'm ready to die for my faith."


Early on the morning of July 19, Bary took off. According to her subsequent account to Williams, she managed to hitch a ride to a church from a woman she didn't know and spent all day praying there. Then someone drove her to a friend's house, and eventually she was taken to a Greyhound station. She boarded a bus, and some 30 hours later, on July 22, she arrived in Orlando, where Blake and Beverly Lorenz live. Though Bary had never met the couple—both pastors of the evangelical Global Revolution Church—Beverly was one of the people she had communicated with on Facebook. (The Lorenzes declined an interview request.)


Bary's parents, who knew none of this, became frantic when they discovered their daughter was gone. They filed a missing-persons report with Columbus police and reached out to everyone they could think of. Police say the Barys cooperated fully with their investigation and seemed like loving parents who were worried sick. Searching among Rifqa's personal items, the Barys found a flash drive filled with spiritual writings by Williams. He'd already spoken to the family and told them he didn't know where Rifqa was. But on Aug. 5—more than two weeks after the girl went missing—Columbus police interviewed him by phone (he was now living in Kansas City, Mo.). He says they threatened to arrest him if Bary didn't appear in the next 24 hours. Immediately after that call, he says, Kansas City police went to his home looking for the girl. Alarmed, Williams says he called and e-mailed all the people he knew Bary had been in touch with, including Blake Lorenz, who's a Facebook friend of his.


The Lorenzes had been housing Bary the whole time, even though it's a misdemeanor in Florida to shelter an unmarried minor for more than 24 hours (the Florida Department of Law Enforcement won't say whether it's investigating the couple). Their attorney, Mat Staver, says they consulted various agencies and nonprofits regarding how to handle Bary's situation. They also called the Florida Department of Children and Families (DCF) several times, though they didn't provide the specifics of her case until Aug. 6 (the day after Williams contacted Blake Lorenz). On Aug. 7, Orlando police picked up Bary, and soon she was in DCF custody. In a procedural error, however, the agency allowed the girl to return to the Lorenz home for three days before moving her to a licensed foster family. During that time, the couple allowed a local TV news crew to tape an interview with Bary that soon appeared on YouTube. Distraught and at times hysterical, the girl alleged that her parents had threatened to commit an honor killing against her. "If they love God more than me, they have to do this," she said. "I'm fighting for my life." (Muslim scholars say that in Islam, there's no such thing as an honor killing for apostasy.)


Once Bary's case became public, numerous Christian conservatives fanned the flames. "This conflict between Islam and Christianity is going to grow greater," said Blake Lorenz, according to the St. Petersburg Times. "This conflict between good and evil is going to grow greater." Stemberger, Bary's lawyer, filed a 33-page memorandum in her case that's filled with innuendo and provocative allegations against the Noor Center, the mosque that the Barys occasionally attend (on a conference call with reporters, Stemberger insisted that the accusations have been "documented extensively"). Among them: that the center is connected to an FBI terror probe (which the FBI denies) and that its CEO has connections to the Muslim Brotherhood (which, along with every other allegation, the Noor Center denies). The mosque is actually regarded as mainstream and regularly hosts interfaith events. "Unfortunately, hate groups appear to be using this family matter as an opportunity to attack the Muslim community and Islamic organizations in order to further their religious and political goals," the center said in a statement.


The court proceedings have been no less combative. At an arraignment last week, the Barys formally denied the allegations made against them. During the proceedings, eight attorneys representing various parties—Rifqa, her parents, and DCF among them—clashed repeatedly, prompting Rifqa to cry at one point. The judge overseeing the case, Daniel Dawson, has ordered the parties into mediation, but it's clear that is unlikely to get anywhere. As a result, the case will probably go to trial (a pretrial hearing is scheduled for Sept. 29), leaving it up to Dawson to decide whether Rifqa will remain in Florida—which she says she wants—or be reunited with her parents. The Barys have volunteered to participate in family counseling with Franklin County Children Services in Ohio, and they agreed to let Rifqa stay with a foster family there in the meantime. But for now, the state of Florida has custody of her. "It's very hard for us to believe that it has gone so far," says Mohamed. "We love her; we want her to come back. She can be a Christian, that's not a problem."

Courtesy: http://www.newsweek.com/id/215100/page/1

OF FACEBOOK, FAITH AND A RUNAWAY TEEN By MICHAEL KRUSE, TIMES STAFF WRITER, ORLANDO

Copyright 2009 Times Publishing Company - All Rights Reserved

St. Petersburg Times (Florida)
September 8, 2009 Tuesday
0 South Pinellas Edition

NATIONAL; Pg. 1A

 As evangelicals spread their message via the Internet, they reach folks like Rifqa Bary.

She lived in Central Ohio, and she fled to Central Florida, but the story of Rifqa Bary didn't start in either place. It started on Facebook.

Bary, 17, ran away from home in July because she believes her Muslim family has to kill her because of her conversion to Christianity. She got on a bus and for 16 days lived in the home of evangelical pastors Blake and Beverly Lorenz of Global Revolution Church after she had gotten to know them through a Facebook prayer group.

The Internet has made meeting more people in more places faster and easier than ever before, and churches are taking advantage. A recent Georgetown University study said 87 percent of religious organizations use the Internet to attract new members. Evangelical Christians, experts say, are particularly good at using social networking sites as powerful tools to proselytize.

Global Revolution isless than a year old and meets in a movie theater in a mall, but it still can have a life-altering impact on a teenage girl and her family more than 1,000 miles away.

"Facebook," Beverly Lorenz said last month in an interview, "is part of my ministry."

"Facebook," Mohamed Bary, the girl's father, said last week, "that was the problem. Not Facebook, but the people who were on who influenced her."

"Evangelicals are aggressively pursuing souls online," said Lee Rainie, the director of the nonpartisan Pew Internet and American Life Project.

"This is pretty deeply embedded in the evangelical communities," he said. "They see it as their great cause: Go ye into all the world."
- - -
Beverly Lorenz, 51, exchanged "seven or eight" Facebook messages with Bary, 16 at the time, this spring and this summer. They had a wee-hours phone call in early July.

The girl showed up at their home late on July 21.

Beverly Lorenz is third generation in the church. Her father was a pastor. So was her grandfather.

She met Blake Lorenz at her father's church. They've been married almost 30 years.

Blake Lorenz, 53, bills himself as a former professional baseball player turned longtime pastor. He's a 1977 graduate of Rollins College in Winter Park and for a while was the school's career leader in pitching wins. He played one summer in the low minor leagues in the Chicago Cubs' organization. He pitched one inning, hit two home runs, and was released.

He felt low and lost until January 1980, he said, when he "met Jesus Christ" in his bedroom.

He was the pastor at Pine Castle United Methodist Church in Orlando for 24 years before he left last fall to start the Global Revolution Church across town. Global Revolution gets together in Theater 10 at the megaplex at Festival Bay. A recent Sunday morning service started with a booming movie-trailer voice: "Buckle up and hold on!"

"Revolution," says the church's Web site, globalrevolutionchurch.org, "means a sudden and radical change. We are about changing our culture."
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The first call Blake Lorenz made to the Department of Children and Families was on July 29. He didn't give his name, and he didn't give Rifqa Bary's name, either, he said, because they told him the girl probably would be taken home.

Meanwhile, up in Columbus, the police were trying to find Bary. Her cell phone was off, so they couldn't track her signal - but her dad paid her bill, so he had access to her call log. He gave it to police.

That led to a name: Brian M. Williams. He's a 2008 Ohio State grad, an aspiring pastor, and was a Facebook friend of Bary and Blake Lorenz. He moved recently from Columbus to Kansas City, Mo., where he was interning at the International House of Prayer, a giant facility in a renovated strip center that the people there call the "missions base" of "a global worship movement."

Columbus police contacted Kansas City police. Kansas City police went to his address. Columbus police talked to Williams on the phone.

Blake Lorenz says he got a call from Williams on Aug. 5. They were here, Williams told Lorenz, looking for Bary.

On Aug. 9, the day before she was put in foster care with a different Christian family, Barywas at the Sunday service at Global Revolution. Blake Lorenz, calling her Anna, talked about her in his sermon.

"How should we live?" he asked his followers. "What choices are we going to make when we begin to get persecuted?

"Anna's been living this out. Anna is a wonderful young woman of God. ... She was a Muslim. Gave her life to Christ. Fell in love with Jesus. She fled for her life.

"The fear we live with," he continued, "is the police were going to show up, take us off, arrest us. ... Oh, that couldn't happen? It happened to the man who baptized her. The police showed up at his apartment in Kansas City, to arrest him, illegally searched his apartment and all the apartments there, looking for her, convinced she was there."

Initially, the sermon was posted on the church's Web site.

The next day the Florida Department of Children and Families decided the Lorenzes now were "not appropriate placement" for Bary.

"Home study," a supervisor wrote, "was approved prior to being informed that the pastor's family was involved with possibly helping the child run away from Ohio."
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Helping.

That could mean a lot of things. Those Facebook messages she exchanged with Beverly Lorenz? The 4 a.m. phone call? The prayers they said together that night?

It could also mean a lot of people. The United States of Prayer, the Facebook group through which Bary met the Lorenzes, has hundreds of members from all over the country.

"The Internet," said Rainie, from the Pew Internet project, "has certainly scrambled the realities of distance and time. Legal authorities are having a new set of challenges. It's a very complicated and not at all settled element of the law now."

Where to look, and how? And who does the looking? Geographical jurisdiction has its limits in a world where geography hardly matters anymore.

Josh McKoy, 20, a Metro State college student in Denver, met Bary through his friend Brian M. Williams and messaged with her on Facebook.

"Brian's known her for a long time," McKoy said over the phone last month. "I don't know how they met but he was a huge help to her. Brian had bought her a Christian book.

"Oftentimes," McKoy said, "he was her transport to church and things like that."

Did Williams have something to do with her bus trip? Did Bary buy her ticket to Orlando?

"We can't confirm that," Columbus police Detective Jerry Cupp said.

Did the Lorenzes buy her bus ticket? They say no.

Who then? They won't say. They're concerned for that person's safety.

"A lot of people helped Rifqa," Blake Lorenz said.

Times news researcher Shirl Kennedy contributed to this report. Michael Kruse can be reached at mkruse@sptimes.com or (727) 893-8751.