ILLINOIS
The Nation
Illinois- Police in Elgin, Illinois, have arrested a prominent imam accused of sexual assault, local law enforcement officials announced on Tuesday morning.
Mohammad Abdullah Saleem, 75, of Gilberts, Illinois, was arrested Sunday without incident and is charged with felony criminal sexual abuse, the Elgin Police Department said in a news release. He was due to appear in Cook County bond court on Tuesday in Rolling Meadows. Police with Elgin’s Major Investigation Division said they started investigating Saleem after a woman contacted authorities in December, and told them the abuse happened while she was working at the Institute of Islamic Education in Elgin in April of 2014.
Saleem, president and founder of Elgin’s Institute of Islamic Education, is a prominent figure in the South Asian Muslim community in the United States. After the unnamed woman stepped forward to accuse him of abuse, three other women told Elgin police that he had abused them when they were children.
One of those women, who asked to be identified only by the name “Sandy,” told Al Jazeera that Saleem abused her when she was 10 or 11. “I thought, this is a revered man,” she said. “What he’s saying, what he’s doing? He loves me, that’s how he’s showing that he loves me.”
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