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| The undated booking photo provided by the Elgin Police Department shows Mohammad Abdullah Saleem, 75, of Gilberts, Ill. Saleem, the longtime head of the Institute of Islamic Education in Elgin, Ill. was arrested Sunday, Feb. 15, 2015, and charged with sexually abusing a 23-year-old woman who worked at the school. Saleem is due to appear in Cook County bond court on Tuesday, Feb. 17 in Rolling Meadows, Ill. |
CHICAGO (AP)
-- The longtime head of a suburban Chicago Islamic school has been
charged with sexually assaulting a woman who worked there, and a civil
suit filed Tuesday accuses him of abusing that employee and three
teenage students. The legal actions shed light on an issue that even
many Muslims say is too often pushed into the shadows within their
communities.
Mohammad Abdullah Saleem, 75 -
who founded the Institute of Islamic Education and is regarded as a
leading Islamic scholar, or imam, in the United States - is charged with
felony criminal sexual abuse.
Prosecutors said he abused the
23-year-old woman, an administrative assistant at the Elgin school, in a
series of escalating incidents over months.
The
civil suit accuses Saleem of abusing that employee, as well as three
female students at the school as far back as the 1980s. The lawyer in
that case, Steven Denny, said Saleem took advantage of both the trust
accorded to him as a religious leader and of the tendency of Muslims to
remain silent on matters of sex and sexual abuse.
"This place was ripe for abuse," Denny told a news conference.
It
took special courage, he added, for his clients to come forward within a
culture that discourages even casual contact - never mind explicit
sexual contact.
The suit says a fifth person
was abused when he was 11 by a male staffer at the school, not Saleem.
It accuses the school of failing to protect children, many of whom lived
on campus. It asks for more than $1.5 million in compensation, saying
the victims are psychologically scarred.
Defense
attorney Thomas Glasgow said he talked to his client about the Elgin
charges and that Saleem "categorically denies the allegations." He
hadn't had a chance to speak to him about the lawsuit. No one answered
the phone Tuesday at the school, which has students from grades six
through 12 and is 25 miles northwest of Chicago.
Saleem,
of Gilberts, was arrested Sunday, Elgin police said. Authorities
started investigating after the woman contacted them in December.
During
a Tuesday bond hearing, prosecutors alleged that a month after the
woman started working at the school in 2012, Saleem started removing the
religious veil from her face and came into her office to hug her. Over
several months, prosecutors said, he would hug her and squeeze her
buttocks and breasts over her clothes.
Last
April, prosecutors say Saleem locked the door of the woman's office,
lifted her dress, forced her to sit on top of him, massaged her and held
her down when she tried to get up. Prosecutors say they collected
evidence.
The lawsuit says that when one
female student told a teacher Saleem touched her inappropriately, she
was told, "Saleem is an old man and old people do things like that - so
just forget it."
Saleem's bond was set at
$250,000 and he was ordered to have no contact with the accuser, her
family or anyone under age 18. Glasgow said he expected Saleem to post
bond later Tuesday. Saleem, who also had to surrender his passport, is
due in court again March 10.
At Denny's news
conference, a statement from the 23-year-old woman called on Muslims to
speak up about sexual abuse. She said, "I will no longer stay silent."
The
chairman of the Council of Islamic Organizations of Greater America, to
which the school belongs, says he examined the facility's bylaws and
found they granted Saleem almost absolute decision-making power. In
light of Saleem's arrest, Mohammed Kaiseruddin said Islamic schools
nationwide should rework their bylaws to allow greater oversight.
Nadiah
Mohajir, director of HEART Women and Girls, which raises awareness
about sexual abuse in the Muslim community, called Saleem's arrest "a
wake-up call" that presented an opportunity to address a topic that's
been taboo for too long.
"The shame and stigma
surrounding sexual abuse is even higher in Muslim communities, with its
emphasis on purity and modesty," she said.
Kaiseruddin said the matter illustrated that Muslims were not immune to a problem that has plagued the Roman Catholic Church.
"We found out that Muslims are burdened by the same (issue) other faiths are burdened with," he said.
