Documentary record Bound by Fear
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Other Islamic institutions and contexts Other Islamic authority or family context Irving, Texas, USA · 2019

Imam Zia Ul-Haq Sheikh ordered to pay $2.55 million after grooming a congregant he counseled from her teens

Record class

Core record

Evidence status

Civil finding

Authority role

head imam, Islamic Center of Irving; pastoral counselor

Organization

Islamic Center of Irving

Spiritual nexus

Sheikh's authority derived from years of religious pastoral counseling of the victim beginning in her teenage years at the mosque; the relationship of religious dependency, not a family or purely secular therapeutic tie, is what the civil finding centers on.

  • Pastoral or clerical authority
  • Sacred sex, purity, or sexual-energy claim

Evidence structure

Proceedings

  1. 2019-08-15 · civil judgment; appealed

    298th Judicial District Court, Dallas County, Texas. District Court Judge Emily Tobolowsky ordered Imam Zia Ul-Haq Sheikh, head imam of the Islamic Center of Irving from 2005 to his forced resignation in 2017, to pay $2.55 million in mental-anguish and punitive damages plus legal fees to a woman he had provided religious/mental-health counseling since she was a minor and with whom he initiated a sexual relationship once she turned 19. Sheikh appealed to the Texas Fifth Court of Appeals (No. 05-19-01329-CV); this record does not assert a final appellate disposition.

Documented coercion mechanisms

  • years of religious and pastoral counseling authority over a congregant beginning in her teens, used to escalate into a sexual relationship once she turned 19

Primary record

Sources

reliable contemporaneous press civil judgment report 'Texas imam ordered to pay $2.55 million in sexual misconduct case', Religion News Service (2019).

Reports the civil judgment amount, the counseling relationship beginning in the victim's teens, and Sheikh's tenure and forced resignation as head imam.

court record appellate docket Zia Ul-Haq Sheikh v. Jane Doe, No. 05-19-01329-CV, Tex. App.—Dallas (2021).

Appellate docket record confirming the case proceeded to the Fifth Court of Appeals following the trial-court judgment.

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