The Alienation of Fatima Loeliger

Sadia Loeliger has finally been successful in her long campaign to turn Fatima against Dr. Scott Loeliger, the father who raised her. Sadia's alienation campaign was noted and its success predicted in advance by several experts and neutral parties involved in this case. For example, in February, 2003 Superior Court Judge Edward J. King, III  wrote:

"The mother's track record over an 11-year period suggests that, as soon as unsupervised visits [with the mother] resume, there will be a complete breakdown in the relationship between the dad and the minor [Fatima]. The dad can only hope that the minor will soon be old enough to recognize the mom's manipulative behavior."

To learn more and read King's statement of decision, click here.

Outside of the charges Sadia Loeliger has made against Scott Loeliger through Fatima, there is no evidence to suggest that Scott Loeliger ever abused Fatima or Sadia. In fact, the record shows that Scott is not abusive and that Sadia is.

Scott Loeliger has written an explanation of how this severe alienation happened. This letter can be found below. Also, we've included a letter Scott wrote to Fatima in April of 2004, after Sadia had already alienated Fatima from Scott.

Scott Loeliger on Fatima's Alienation

Let me tell you about my daughter.  She is a delightful child trapped in a nightmare, one that forces choices and sides and lies.

From the moment she was born, I was in love.  When I left the family home in Salinas in May 1990 she was only seven months but her mother's behavior seemed to always place us at risk.  I stayed at a series of friends' homes, sleeping in the spare room or on the floor. The whole time I would go back to our duplex to see Fatima but her mother always refused.  She threw all of my belongings into a mud puddle in front of the house.  She came into the hospital where I worked, raging and looking for me. I almost quit.

Finally, after not seeing my daughter for weeks I took the matter to court.  At the first mediation session Sadia wanted me to have primary, until she saw how happy I was with this, then she changed her mind.  I later asked for joint custody and liberal visitation.  It is all I really wanted, but even getting to see Fatima one evening a week and every other weekend led to endless conflict, exchanges in the hospital, missed visits because Fatima was at the doctor's, etc... Sadia was very adept at setting up conflict in public places and I was then judged a problem even though it was I who did not get my visitation.

After the Monterey court gave me physical custody and Sadia disappeared in May, 1991 it seemed like heaven. It was hard, my hours and need for babysitters but Fatima and I did everything together. She rode on the back of my bike, we went on a two week car camping trip to the Northwest, and went to the Monterey Bay over and over.  I was still in love.

When her mother reappeared in December of 1991 she demanded full custody again; no mediation desired, and a therapist recommended, without court solicitation, that Fatima be replaced with mom. 

But the court allowed us to move to Porterville and we set up in a new home, with a nurse practitioner from my clinic who shared expenses and helped me with Fatima.  Then I met Christina in early 1993 and she fell in love with us both.  The pictures from then, 1993-95, portray us as a happy unit.  Fatima was my little tom-boy, reveling in the mud, climbing the trees. Of course, this enraged Sadia again and the struggle continued.  She found out about a surgery that Christina had, found out about a confidential hospital case and sent five police cars to my home because some women claimed that I was kidnapping my own child.  We left Fatima behind in hopes that some peace would ensue.

No such luck. We moved back from Hawaii and settled in Red Bluff in early 1996.  The Tulare family court granted me every other weekend visitation and lots of the holidays.  Fatima was having a harder time making the transition but readily adapted to the 760 mile roundtrip with me Friday to Sunday. I helped in her class, and she loved me and Christina.

The court stuff never ended. Each and every visit ended with a confrontation in front of her Porterville home with her and her cronies gesturing and screaming at us as we dropped Fatima off after the long drive.  They called Christina "grandma" (because she's older than I am) and "bimbo."  Fatima would quickly get out of the car and carefully cross the street--never looking back, never waving.  We always said our goodbyes and hugs and kisses down the street before we got to her mother's.

Fatima told me about the abuse in May of 1997--finally I believed that her mother had completely lost it and given in to the dark side I had seen over the years. The stories from Fatima, her cousin Sara, and her babysitter Doris were overwhelming. 

Fatima became more and more distant.  I still had the same visitation but Fatima no longer warmed to us very quickly.  She started to parrot her mother's accusations about Christina. She refused to talk at all during our midweek phone sessions and then finally, began to refuse to come with me on my weekends.  At least once, I left without her, driving alone 380 miles back to Red Bluff.

Then came Fatima's removal in 1998 by the order of the juvenile court.  Fatima never missed a hitch; started a new school, excelled and played with her new dog, Zoe.  The court matters continued but she was kept out of the madness by her attorney.  She never much talked about her mom, we never asked her, and life went on.  She played in the band and started to play soccer, and  what a player she was. I watched as assistant coach on the sideline.  Christina helped out, driving, taking pictures.  We were okay.

We were very close and then Fatima "discovered" Noah, our adopted son.  She was intimately involved in the adoption, approved, met him with us, and became the older sister.  She had not forgotten her mother or half-sister, and had plenty of pictures of them on her walls.  But she seemed content and well grounded, with a good stock of friends and activities in Red Bluff.

When therapist Helen Clark contacted me in July of 2001 about Fatima seeing her mother again, I clutched.  I weighed going back to court, which her mother was prepared to do, versus following Ms. Clark's suggestion.  I fatefully chose the latter.  Fatima began to have supervised visits, then longer times, then finally overnights with her mother in Davis by Thanksgiving.

A child we hadn't seen since 1998 re-emerged.  She was secretive about her visits with her mother, stated that what happened there was none of our business, and wouldn't even answer simple questions like "what did you and your sister do?" Within months of contact she began telling certain friends that she would be going back to her mom's soon.

Her relationship with Christina deteriorated almost overnight--she refused to treat her as an adult, just like years before when her mother indoctrinated her.  Her brother became someone of less value because he was not "blood".  Her peer relationships also changed except one girl, the one whose mother started communicating with Sadia. 

By February of 2002, Fatima's seventh grade year, her mother e-mailed an entire summer itinerary that included only a week or two with us.  All before any of this was discussed with the therapist.  By June, Fatima basically stopped treating us as parents, refusing even basic parental requests for chores, cooperation, etc.  She began to hate and to call her brother "fat" and "stupid."  I discussed this with Helen Clark, but she wrote it off to custody conflict instead of the alienation it clearly was.  Fatima would get into our car after an exchange with her mother; she would give her new stepfather a warm hug but glare mutely at Christina or I.  She was gone.

She ran away on October 14 by leaving left her school campus at noon.  Her friends were worried and reported her.  She called her mother, who conveniently was at the office of her therapist, Debra Wiegel. Purportedly her mother said, "oh please obey your father, don't run away."  So she called the sheriff and was picked up and placed in foster home.

I didn't see Fatima for a few days and then under supervised settings in a visitation center.  She was angry and withdrawn, no longer the daughter I had known just the year before.  After CPS completed their evaluation and sent the matter back to the family court in Red Bluff, she refused to come home, and threatened to run away again.  One time, in March of 2003, after the ruling that retained my full legal and physical custody, I tried to take her back to the home in the hills, with her dogs and her pets.  She got out of the car in the driveway and walked back out to the main road and started walking the 7 miles into town, angry and cussing at me.

When I went to see her at the foster home, where her voluntary placement was in effect, she refused to come out of her room to see me.  Only one time, when a special program at St. Mary's College was offered her did she get into my car and we participated together in a program for gifted kids and their parents.  It was the same Johns Hopkins things she had done for years.  I had a glimmer of hope, she actually let me hug her and watched her perform so well.  But it was fleeting before her anger and withdrawal returned.

After I finally decided to let her live with her mother in the fall of 2003, she finally hugged me and cried and we held each other.  I wondered were my Fatima had gone, wondered why she couldn't exist in her entirety in both her parental worlds.  But I had never known her mother to allow this, ever.  As I helped my daughter onto the train the last day of that summer, I felt the loss looming before me.

After that, nothing like love or respect ever returned to my house.  She came every other Friday because "I have to."  She arrived when she felt like, calling only from the train station, pretending she didn't have the cell phone her mother gave her.  She always demanded to leave early.  She continued to play soccer but it was without heart.  She stopped talking to us, stopped calling her stepmother anything, even Tina. Her brother was not just a pest but a non-entity who always seemed in her way.  The compassion and love we had raised her with had been destroyed. I was no longer her father, and she did not have to obey any of my wishes.

The attempt to involve her in therapy was a disaster. I expected them to be a little more creative but they could not engage Fatima.  They didn't bother her and she remained in her room for nearly 24 hours.  As she got ready to leave early again I told her that I was reconsidering our "deal" for her to live with her mother. She no longer acted as our daughter and seemed to hate us in ways that defied belief.  She exploded and  started destroying her room. Later, when the police came, she told them she would harm herself and they handcuffed her and took her for a psych evaluation. And nothing has ever been the same since.

It first arose when her mother accused me of keeping Fatima from attending his birth, which was impossible since no one could have predicted when he would "emerge," and because Fatima was at a soccer tournament in Bakersfield the day he was born.  This was set up by Sadia as an interference with Fatima's relationships to her "side" and Fatima incorporated it into her new, angry and denigrating relationship with Noah which had not existed the previous two years before.

As an adopted child, Noah was not yet four but had already experienced lots of loss and disruption in his life.  His sense of belonging was clearly linked to his relationship with Fatima; she loved him, played with him, and looked like him with her brown complexion.

As she became more distant and angry, he was confused. The arguments that developed between Fatima and her parents were hard on Noah.  When she called him "fat" and "stupid it" stunned him.  "What had I done?", He seemed to wonder.

After Fatima left in October, 2002 he was really unsettled.  He asked us whether we would send him away next. He couldn't understand her empty bed.  Fatima refused to see him while she was in the foster home, and we decided not to try to take him there anymore--it was just too hard on him.

After Fatima returned for the brief weeks in May, June, and August it was if Noah was no longer a brother.  Fatima called him by her half-brother's name on more than one occasion--I was never sure whether she did this purposely and just a slip; it seemed to reveal how much pressure she was under from her mom to de-humanize her relationships in my home.  When people do that, then any manner of behavior is justified, even if it hurts your family.

Just before Fatima left our home for good in late March of 2003 Noah and I tried to watch a soccer match of hers in Davis.  We stayed away from her team and her mother and stepfather.  Noah called out to her and we enjoyed watching her play.  At halftime she purposely came over to us on the other side of the field where we were eating our lunch and started to cuss at me, "f---ing this and get the h--- out of here."  Noah was there and as I pulled him away from confronting his sister he said "you shouldn't act like this to your family." Fatima screamed at us in front of other fans and her teammates.  Noah suffered another setback from his beloved, absent sister.

Over the last few years he has sent a number of e-mails and cards to Fatima.  She has not acknowledged any of these, or acted as if he existed.  It didn't surprise me because I have sent e-mails every week or two since August of 2003 without a single reply. 

The current state of Fatima's absolute alienation, not just towards me but also Noah, was exposed again this last week.  When Noah called her at her mother's home in Davis she told him "I only have a brother in my house here," and then proceeded to cuss me over and over again, knowing he was standing there with me.  Despite this Noah still carries the baby brother torch for his missing, beloved big sister.  He still wants to try to call, and still carries her last soccer picture on a button on his back pack.  It is just hard for his mother and I to explain this enormous loss to him in terms his seven year old self can understand.  He does know, however, that Fatima's current tragedy does not mean he will leave us.  We are blessed by his presence in our home and wish Fatima would realize that too.

My daughter, Fatima Busaat Loeliger, age 16, now treats me with scorn, claiming she was miserable and abused for all of her years in my home, claiming that her only true parents are her mother and stepfather, claiming that her mother never abused her, claiming to be completely happy the way things are--without her dad, without her other family, friends, pets and all of her clothes and possessions from the first 13 years of her life.  Those sit in the basement, waiting for their owner to re-claim them, to re-inhabit them, to hold them, to remember them.  For right how, my precious Fatima, light of my heart, is too far away to hear or feel or see the sadness and longing she left behind. It feels like a living death, so close but not there. The door is always open, the bed is still waiting for her sleepy form, the clothes, the books, the stuffed animals and old toys are waiting for their renewal just as are we, her father and her other family.  I hope she knows this always.

Scott Loeliger
November 14, 2005

Scott's Letter to Fatima
April 2004

Dear Fatima:

I am writing this letter so that you may understand my feelings towards you and my sadness about our relationship as it is now. I am sure that the problems of last weekend, with you running out of the house etc., were as hard for you as they were for me and for Christina and Noah.  As I’ve told you many times, I am sincerely trying to understand the reasons for the depth of your anger towards me. I am searching for some way to reach a resolution so that we may move onward in peace.

You have told me several times how angry you were that you spent time in foster care.  Fatima, I am very sorry that it was necessary for you to spend half of your eighth grade year in foster care. It turned out that way because those in charge sincerely believed it was best for you not to return to your mother's home at that time. I did not make that decision alone, and that decision was not taken lightly.

Let's not fight over why you spent those years with me when you were younger.  Fatima, I have always tried to protect you and shelter you. I’ve always wanted the best for you, which is why I respected your request to return to your mother’s home this year. I truly believed that by letting you go there, you would be free to express your love and affection for me, and for Christina and Noah and all your family here, who love you very much. I truly believed that your request was based on your desire to be free to love both your parents. I respected your request out of love and respect for you as a individual and as my daughter.

Fatima, it didn’t turn out like that. It seems you are now angrier than ever before. I can’t understand why. I feel as though I have lost you, and I love you more than you can understand or imagine. I am so proud of you. You are beautiful and talented and I am happy to see you growing into an outstanding young woman.

I am heartbroken, however, that such a beautiful young woman can be so angry, and express hatred and even violence towards those who love her.

But the purpose of this letter is not to assign blame for the years past but to ask you about the weekends to come.  On both last Saturday and last Sunday, you left home angrily. By not telling us where you were going, where you would be or when you would return, you were running the risk, the very real risk, of falling prey to some predator taking you from the street and harming you.  Although you are tall and strong, you are vulnerable and this causes me and surely your mother too, to worry when we don’t know where you are.

What was also very upsetting was that you also said you might harm your family here. That surely is a sign of the depth of your distress.  What can I do to help overcome this?

Each Friday before your visits I look forward to some breakthrough and change in the tone of your time here.  But I am hurt by the continued level of your anger. I wait anxiously for both of us move on to a place of peace but this is not happening. It seems you only come here because you are required to by court order – the same court order that made you come back here on Saturday evening, as you said, against your will.

Fatima, I want you to spend peaceful, loving time here, I love you very very much. But perhaps the time has come for you to search your heart and decide whether it is possible for you to behave in a more loving, normal and appropriate way towards your family who loves you.

Fatima, I do expect you to not confront me by leaving in anger like you did the last few days; no father or mother can tolerate that from their child. You are putting yourself at risk, and this is simply not tolerable.

Please let me know by e-mail early this week when you would prefer to come down next weekend.

Please also let me know, after you think it through and really search your heart, whether you are prepared to behave politely, without anger, and with the peace that I expect and require in our home.

We have peace in our hearts. We would like you to find peace in yours. We want to help you and love you and protect you. We cannot do it when you behave in such an out of control and angry fashion.

Love always,
Dad