Now 18, Rifqa Bary Gains Long-Awaited Freedom

ICC Note

Rifqa Bary plans to “continue to preach the gospel to anyone who wants to hear it, as she heard it five years ago.”

08/10/2010 United States (Charisma)-Rifqa Bary, the teen convert at the center of a high-profile religious and family dispute, turned 18 Tuesday and was released from Ohio state custody, ending a yearlong legal battle with her parents.

It was not announced where Bary would be living, but her attorney, Kort Gatterdam, said she plans to “continue to preach the gospel to anyone who wants to hear it, as she heard it five years ago.”

This time last year, Bary was living in Orlando, Fla., where she fled from her home near Columbus, Ohio, claiming her parents threatened to kill her for leaving Islam for Christianity. Her parents, Mohamed and Aysha Bary, have denied those allegations, and an investigation found no evidence to support her accusations

In October, she was returned to Columbus and had since been living in foster care there.

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Whether Bary will remain in Ohio or move elsewhere is unclear, said the teen’s friend, Jamal Jivanjee. He said she has developed strong friendships with Christians across the country. “There’s a lot of people who are willing to take her in and provide for her,” he said.

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Craig McCarthy, a Christian attorney who represented Aysha Bary when the case was in Florida, said he never saw evidence that the teen would be in danger with her parents and laments the outcome of the legal battle.

“I think it’s a tragedy that a young woman converted to my faith and ended up never reconciling with her parents and remaining estranged even with her brothers,” McCarthy said. “I think a bunch of people rushed to make this case into their own image, to make it what they wanted it to be—an argument about a religion or whatever their agenda was.”

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Gatterdam said his client loves and forgives her parents but still doesn’t feel safe with them. He said reunification would not be possible until her parents admit to past abuse, which he believes caused Bary to seek love and acceptance in Christ.

“The parents, whether it’s religious reasons or whatever, they just cannot accept her conversion,” he said. “And to her it was a life or death situation, so she had to leave, and we’ve seen no evidence that anything has changed in them.”

Jivanjee, a convert from Islam himself who leads a Florida-based ministry called Illuminate, said Bary’s case got the attention of young Muslims, who he said were moved by her courage and are now curious about Christianity.

“Now that she’s 18 and she’s able to communicate as she chooses, I think that’s only going to increase,” he said, “because she’s a walking testimony to the fact that Muslims, especially Muslim women, can escape abuse and be free of this system and live to tell about it.”

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