'TOO WESTERN TO BE A MOM'
Us ma loses custody in Saudi Arabia
An American woman living in Saudi Arabia lost custody of her young daughter — because a judge in the strict Islamic country deemed the mom “too Western to raise the child,” according to reports.
Distraught mother Bethany Vierra, 32, was racing against the clock Sunday to appeal the ruling, her parents said.
“We love our granddaughter,” Bethany’s father, Myron Vierra, told CNN. “I think our deepest fear is that we might not ever see her again.”
Bethany and her Saudi businessman husband were divorced in 2018, and she opened custody proceedings for their 4-year-old daughter, Zaina, in November.
Despite providing video evidence showing her ex-husband rolling a joint and verbally abusing her in front of their child, Vierra, a yoga teacher originally from Wenatchee, Wash., was denied custody last month.
“The mother is new to Islam, is a foreigner in this country, and continues to definitively embrace the customs and traditions of her upbringing,” Judge Abdul-Ellah ibn Mohammed alTuwaijri wrote in his ruling, according to CNN. “We must avoid exposing [Zaina] to these customs and traditions, especially at this early age.”
To prove Vierra wasn’t a fit parent under Islamic law, her ex submitted photos of her in a bikini and in yoga pants, and with her hair uncovered.
He argued that her social-media pages were “full of nudity, intermingling of the two sexes and a lot of things and actions contrary to our religion and customs and traditions.”
The ex weaponized the fact that Vierra had gone to the Burning Man festival, which he called “the world’s strangest festival,” where attendees “appear in crazy clothes and stay awake all night dancing and surrounded by people wearing only shoes made of fur, or drinking drugs or cold drinks.”
Zaina was sent to live with her paternal grandmother — because the judge claimed that “it is in men’s nature not to stay at home and not to honor/fulfill parental role themselves.”
But Vierra’s ex-mother-in-law had allegedly physically and emotionally abused her own children, according to court testimony reported by The New York Times.
Vierra, who moved to Saudi Arabia in 2011 to teach at a university, told the paper last month that she promised her daughter she’d fight the decision.
Her parents, Myron and Kathi Vierra, told CNN she had until Sunday to appeal, but it was not clear if she was able to.
The couple said Bethany won’t give up. “If Zaina can’t leave, she won’t leave,” Kathi said.