Rifqa Bary

You may recall John Stemberger, president of the Florida Family Policy Council, from his involvement a few years back as the Rifqa Bary saga was being played out in Florida, when he used short-lived role as Bary's attorney as an opportunity to recklessly sling allegations that her Muslim parents had ties to terrorist organizations and that she had been physically and sexually abused by family members.

Because of his actions, Stemberger is facing a $10 million lawsuit from the attorney who represented Bary's parents and is now looking at being disciplined by the Florida Supreme Court for misconduct:

The Florida Bar asked the state Supreme Court to discipline Orlando lawyer John Stemberger for his conduct in the high-profile case of teenage runaway Rifqa Bary, according to documents released Tuesday ... According to a complaint mailed to the Florida Supreme Court on Monday, that action would have ended Stemberger's representation of Bary.

But Stemberger went on Fox News on four separate occasions and said or implied during the ongoing dependency case in Ohio that he remained Bary's attorney, the complaint said.

Stemberger also accused Omar Tarazi, the attorney for Bary's parents, of being paid by terrorist-associated organizations.

At the time, Tarazi was under a gag order in the Ohio case and couldn't refute the accusations, the Bar's complaint said.

Tarazi, in his complaint to The Florida Bar, accused Stemberger of making false and damaging statements about him.

...

On Tuesday, Stemberger responded to the complaint, by saying in a statement: "I have talked with several former members of other grievance committees who have stated that this complaint should have been closed down by the Bar immediately after it was filed as being without merit …In time, the facts presented, will cause this frivolous complaint filed by a disgruntled, opposing lawyer who lost his case to be dismissed."

It was one year ago when I wrote my first post about Rifqa Bary, the teenage girl who fled from Ohio to Florida claiming that her Muslim parents were going to kill her for converting to Christianity.

Ove the past year, the person who most eagerly and relentlessly sought to expolit the Rifqa Bary saga for her own political ends was anti-Muslim zealot Pamela Geller of Atlas Shurgs  ... and for her efforts, she is now being sued for $10 million by the attorney who represented Rifqa's parents:

An Ohio lawyer says a blogger and a former attorney for a runaway Christian convert defamed him by alleging he has contacts with terrorists and criminals.

Omar Tarazi (tuh-RAH'-zee) is seeking $10 million in damages in a federal lawsuit filed Friday to compensate for damage he claims to his reputation.

Tarazi represented the parents of Rifqa Bary, a teenage convert who ran away to Florida saying she feared harm from her Muslim mother and father.

He says blogger Pamela Oshry wrongly linked him to Hamas, considered a terrorist group by the U.S. government.

"Pamela Oshry" was the name Geller went by before her divorce.

UPDATE: Tarazi is also suing John Stemberger of the Florida Family Policy Council:

A Muslim attorney on one side of the Rifqa Bary dispute has filed a $10 million defamation lawsuit against Orlando attorney John Stemberger, an activist Christian attorney who worked for the other side.

The suit was filed by Omar Tarazi in federal court in Columbus, Ohio, Friday. It names John Stemberger of the conservative Florida Family Policy Council.

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Stemberger represented Rifqa for several weeks in Florida. That was in the days just after she ran away but before a state circuit judge in Orlando ordered her returned to Ohio.

In the suit, Tarazi accuses Stemberger of falsely claiming on Fox News that Tarazi was associated with a Columbus-area mosque that had ties to terrorists. It also says Stemberger defamed Tarazi by saying Rifqa's parents fired qualified court-appointed Ohio attorneys to use only one – Tarazi – who was paid by a pro-Muslim group in Ohio, the Council on American-Islamic Relations or CAIR.

Tarazi was paid by no one, according to the suit.

Stemberger on Tuesday called the suit "ridiculous and frivilous."

"This is just an attempt at grandstanding after a loss," he said.

Stemberger acknowledged but would not discuss an investigation by the Florida Bar into possible ethics violations by him for statements he made about the case.

Next Tuesday, Rifqa Bary turns 18, which should finally bring the legal aspects of this sorry saga to an end, though I would not be at all surprised to see her become a famous activist in the charismatic/intercessor circles to which she is tied (provided she can get her immigration status sorted out,) especially now that she is claiming that a recent faith healing cured her cancer:

Christian convert Rifqa Bary is refusing chemotherapy for cancer because she believes that she was cured at a faith-healing event, according to a motion in Franklin County Juvenile Court.

Rifqa was to undergo a year of chemotherapy after her cancer was surgically removed, the document filed by her parents states.

But Rifqa, who is in foster care, was taken to a faith-healing event in Youngstown a couple of weeks ago by Franklin County Children Services, without her parents' consent, according to the document.

A motion to force treatment is to be considered today in Juvenile Court.

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[T]ests have determined that Rifqa has a "rare form of cancer," according to her attorneys' court filings. Her supporters have said she has uterine cancer.

It's unclear whether she is cancer-free at the moment. The Barys' attorney, Omar Tarazi, said in a motion that Rifqa will need a hysterectomy if the cancer returns.

The Barys want to force chemotherapy and are concerned that their daughter could die without treatment, Tarazi wrote.

The irony, of course, is that Bary ran away from her parents, claiming that they were going to kill her for converting to Christianity.  And now her parents are trying to force her to get chemotherapy because they are afraid that she will die without it, while Bary claims not to need it because her Christianity has cured her cancer. 

The central issue throughout the entire Rifqa Bary saga was Bary's contention that her Muslim parents were going to kill her for converting to Christianity and that, for her own safety, she had to flee to Florida and continues to refuse to have anything to do with her parents.

So I can't even being to imagine how the news that Bary has uterine cancer is going to impact this case:

Fathima Rifqa Bary, the Muslim teenager from Columbus who converted to Christianity and ran away to Florida, is being treated for uterine cancer.

Rifqa, now 17, has already undergone two operations and will have a third one Thursday, according to a close friend and her former Orlando lawyer.

"The only reason she wants this to be known is she wants people to pray for her," said John Stemberger, who represented Rifqa in her 2009 fight to stay in Florida.

She lost that battle and was returned in October to Columbus, where she lives with a foster family.

She has been in and out of the hospital but remains under the care of the foster family, said Stemberger, who said he spoke to her last week.

Jamal Jivanjee, an ordained pastor who directs an Orlando-based ministry, also confirmed that Rifqa has cancer.

In an email to her friends and supporters, he wrote, "Her situation is very serious, and she will need the help of many people in the weeks and months ahead. ... As soon as Rifqa heals from the major surgery that she will undergo this Thursday, it is expected that she will need to undergo several rounds of chemotherapy. ...

"Rifqa is in desperate need of an army of supporters to know about what is occurring regarding her situation, and to pray for her healing," Jivanjee wrote.

Reached by telephone, Rifqa's father, Mohamed Bary, would not discuss his daughter's health.

But I certainly can imagine how Bary's anti-Islam, right-wing defenders like Pamela Geller will seek to exploit this.  Here is Geller's first post on the news and you can already see that she is laying the groundwork to accuse Bary's parents and their lawyers of working to undermine Bary's medical care and trying to take advantage of her condition ... and it is only a matter of time before Geller and her ilk start accusing Bary's parents of trying to use Bary's cancer to do what they have been prevented from doing:

While this is a tragedy, how Rifqa is being victimized by her lawyers and her parents is nothing less than an atrocity. Her lawyers kept her in the dark about her condition -- despite the seriousness of her cancer -- for well over a week while they conferred with her parents and their CAIR-appointed lawyers about her treatment. While most cases like this result in a hysterectomy, Rifqa is only having the advanced malignancy removed. From what I understand, the survival rate in cases like these is only five percent.

Was she allowed to get a second opinion? No.

While she was lying ill, her lawyers brought her parents to her hospital bed. She was awaiting treatment and when she saw them, whereupon she became very agitated and upset. Her parents had to be removed.