Couple say teen 'was terrified'

It started with a middle-of-the-night phone call.

Beverly Lorenz wanted to go to bed. But when a fearful teenager she barely knew - a girl she met through the Internet social-networking site Facebook and who lived 1,000 miles away - asked if they could talk, Lorenz agreed.

That mid-July phone call led to a 30-hour Greyhound bus trip, and cultural and spiritual debates over the fate of one girl: Rifqa Bary.

And it thrust Beverly and husband Blake Lorenz, pastors who have served in Central Florida for more than 25 years, into unfamiliar roles.

They've been accused of kidnapping Bary from her Muslim parents. They've been accused of brainwashing Bary. Now they're concerned for their own lives.

"We weren't trying to be secret or hidden," Beverly Lorenz said. "We were trying to help her to the best of our ability."

The accusations made against them, Blake Lorenz said, aren't true. And they're not anti-Muslim.

"I'm pro Jesus," he said. "And Jesus tells us to love everybody. I do my best to try to do that. And we're praying for her parents and for healing and reconciliation."

On July 19, Bary ran away from her home in Westerville, Ohio, boarding a bus bound for Orlando - and the Lorenzes' home - with a ticket paid for by somebody else. The teen, who had converted from Islam to Christianity four years earlier, told Beverly she feared for her life.

The Lorenzes took her in. The pastors said they quizzed her about her life and family.

Beverly Lorenz, a former teacher, said it was clear to them that Bary was telling the truth. She wasn't a drama queen - or a teen feuding with her parents. If that were the case, Blake Lorenz said, they would have sent her back to Ohio.

"She really believed that her dad would kill her and the Muslim community would kill her. She believed that with all of her heart. She was terrified of going back to Ohio," he said.

Bary's parents, Mohamed and Aysha Bary, have denied any intention to harm their daughter.

At a hearing Thursday, an attorney for Aysha Bary said that a sealed Florida Department of Law Enforcement investigation into the teen's safety is "favorable" for her parents.

The judge in the case issued a gag order prohibiting attorneys in the case from talking to the media. A pretrial hearing on whether Bary should be sent back to Ohio has been scheduled for the end of the month.

The case is headed for a trial in which the judge will hear testimony and decide whether Bary should be returned to Ohio.

Asked why they were willing to take Bary in, Lorenz said, "We really believed it was the Holy Spirit leading us. We prayed about it. We sought legal counsel. We didn't do anything without legal counsel because we didn't want to break any laws."

After Bary arrived, the Lorenzes said, they called 11 lawyers, a judge and Catholic Charities. Each had different advice. No one knew what to do with Bary.

Local lawyer Mat Staver, a longtime friend of the Lorenzes who has offered the couple advice, said they have been put into an odd situation.

"They're in a Catch-22," said Staver, founder and chairman of Liberty Council, a conservative legal advocacy group. "They were put in a situation that they've never been in before. Do I not open my door, do I open my door?"

Bary lived with them for more than two weeks before a judge determined during an Aug. 10 hearing that Bary needed to be in a foster home until the case could be sorted out by the courts.

Since that first public hearing, they said they've been misquoted, falsely accused and portrayed as extremists - or as running a cult.

Blake Lorenz, 53, was a pastor at Pine Castle United Methodist Church for 16 years before retiring last year. In October, he and Beverly started Global Revolution Church.

Beverly Lorenz, 51, is a third-generation pastor, following in the footsteps of her father and grandfather. The couple has three adult children.

"We just want what's best for Rifqa," Blake Lorenz said. "We feel we did what anyone would do. Someone was crying out for their life to be protected and we tried to do just that - help her."