For an hour and a half Thursday, lawyers argued about how to handle the legal battle that has sprung up around Fathima Rifqa Bary, the tiny 17-year-old who ran away from her Muslim home in Ohio to the shelter of Christian evangelists in Orlando.
Never once, though, did they raise the core issue: Should she be returned to her parents?
So for now, she will continue to be a ward of the state of Florida, living with an Orlando-area foster family.
Attorneys for the girl’s parents had gone to court Thursday, hoping to get her sent back to Westerville, Ohio, her hometown.
They had ammunition to back up their argument: a report by the Florida Department of Law Enforcement that says her family poses no threat to her.
In Columbus, the Franklin County Department of Children Services has come to the same conclusion.
But Circuit Judge Daniel Dawson focused, instead, on the business of litigation. He and the nine attorneys in the courtroom hashed through several issues:
-- Should the FDLE report that clears her parents be released to the public? Dawson’s answer: No. At least not for 10 days.
-- Should he appoint another attorney for the teenager? Answer: No, she already has three.
-- Should he issue a gag order banning attorneys from talking about the case? Answer: Yes.
-- Is it proper for the girl to continue to receive visits from the adult children of the Orlando pastors who took her in and kept her whereabouts secret from her parents and authorities for two weeks? Answer: Yes.
Blake and Beverly Lorenz, who have served in the ministry in Central Florida for more than 25 years, allowed Rifqa to live with them for more than two weeks. They now pastor Global Revolution Church, but spent more than 15 years at Pine Castle United Methodist Church.
The hearing at times was emotional. Rifqa had entered the courtroom bright and smiling, but she later broke into tears after one of her attorneys, Krista Bartholomew, raised her voice in challenging another lawyer when he announced the FDLE’s findings.
It was her second issue of the day regarding FDLE. Earlier, she said FDLE investigators questioned Rifqa with no attorneys present.
“We did get frantic phone calls that evening from the child,” she said. “We have some ongoing concerns.”
Rifqa would have started her junior year at New Albany High School in suburban Columbus this week had she not run away, but she stayed out one evening without permission and got into a confrontation with her mother. The next day, July 19, Rifqa disappeared and fled to Orlando on a Greyhound bus.
In a sworn statement, she says her father threatened to kill her because she has become a Christian.
Her father, Mohamed Bary, 47, says he never made that threat and wants his daughter to come home. Both parents have agreed to place her in an Ohio foster home for at least 30 days while Rifqa undergoes therapy, should the judge allow her return.
The story Rifqa tells -- that of a Muslim girl, fleeing for her life, running for religious freedom -- has mesmerized thousands of people and created a storm of controversy.
Some say she’s a hero, a Christian martyr-in-waiting, others that she is misrepresenting Islam as a bloody, vicious faith.
Before and after the hearing, strangers on both sides of the debate gathered outside Orange County’s juvenile courthouse on Michigan Street and yelled at each other.
Inside, Shayan Elahi, the attorney for Rifqa’s father, accused one of the girl’s attorneys, John Stemberger, of “grandstanding” and telling anti-Muslim “lies, lies, lies.”
Stemberger is a conservative Christian activist who jumped into the case last month. This week, in court pleadings, he said the girl cannot return to Ohio because her father’s mosque is a safe haven for Muslim terrorists.
Local, state and federal authorities in Columbus say they have no evidence to support that claim.
It was not clear Thursday what eventually will happen to the girl. She is fighting to stay here. For the second time, the judge ordered her and her parents to mediation in hopes they can work out their problems. He set a pretrial hearing for Sept. 29.
Rifqa, who read a Bible during her last hearing earlier this month, said nothing at Thursday’s hearing. In the past two weeks, DCF has moved her to a new foster home, according to John K. Cooper, director of DCF’s Orlando region. He did not provide details.
Now at issue is Rifqa’s mental health. Attorneys and the judge discussed it briefly Thursday. Dawson ordered her to undergo counseling.
Should she also, the judge asked, begin taking medication?
No, Bartholomew insisted.