Muslim Family Split by Court

Parents File New Lawsuit

Family Before Court Separation Order (update 2011)

We all know there could never be anything to make up for loosing your children - especially when it is due to a predjudiced system against your religion and culture.
But sometimes there is a little something to be learned from these experiences and even possibly something of benefit for others. Consider this:

For no other reason than hatred toward the way of life of Muslims living in America - the Amer family had to suffer through this tragic experience.
Very likely there is little satisfaction in proving their own innocence in false charges brought against them, when the final results still took away they chidlren - for no other reason than blind predjudice.

You may remember the case from some years back, dealing with a family being divided up by a Judge in Michigan. Well, the courts are going to hear this story again, from a little different angle now, because the couple is now suing the center that was supposed to be giving "the best Christian care" to their 3 children. Claims in court say the center abused their kids while under its care.
Already there has been new legislation in Michigan dealing with placement of children with related families rather than displacing them and putting them into strange enviornments or unfamiliar cultures and religions.
Maybe there will be some more good come to this family from all of this. We pray that it is true.

Read...

By DANIEL HERATY
Times-Herald Newspapers
DEARBORN – A local couple is suing a foster care center for monetary damages, saying that three of their children were abused under its care.

Rehab Amer and her husband, Ahmed, both of Dearborn, filed a lawsuit Tuesday in the U.S. District Court for Eastern District of Michigan against three women employed by the Judson Center in Royal Oak and two employed by the Michigan Department of Human Services.

The suit alleges that the children were taken from them illegally and abused, and that they were placed in homes that severed them from their culture, religion and family, causing them to be separated completely from their parents.

Court documents do not specify the amount of damages being sought.

In 1985, Rehab Amer was accused of second-degree murder when her 2-year-old son, Samir, fell in the bathtub and fractured his skull.

She was acquitted by a jury in 1986, but still lost custody of three other children – an older son, Mohammed; the deceased child’s twin sister, Suehier; and another daughter, Zinabe – because the death certificate still listed the cause of death as homicide.

A fifth child, Hussein, was raised by the Amers as a nephew so they could retain custody.

The lawsuit alleges that officials from the Judson Center and DHS went out of their way to see that the children were not retuned to their parents. It further alleges that the children suffered abuse while at the Judson Center.

Officials there declined through an e-mail to comment for this story.

In 2007, now-retired Wayne County Judge Edward Thomas ordered the cause of death changed to accidental after a post-mortem examination determined the 2-year-old had brittle bone disease.

“They would do everything in their power to see their children stripped from them,” attorney Nabih Ayad said of the organizations.

The Amers’ struggle to be reunited with their children led to the passing of state legislation known as the Amer Act. Signed into law in December by then-Gov. Jennifer Granholm, it says courts must give special consideration to relatives when deciding where children are to be placed in Michigan’s foster care system.

The law gives the adoption agency 30 days to “identify, locate, notify, and consult with relatives to determine placement with a fit and appropriate relative…”

Ayad said it could take a while for the case to be heard because the complaint was filed in federal court.

 

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