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Muslim leader, attorney faces OLR complaint (UPDATE)

By: Eric Heisig//September 17, 2014//

Muslim leader, attorney faces OLR complaint (UPDATE)

By: Eric Heisig//September 17, 2014//

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A Milwaukee attorney and the head of the Islamic Society of Milwaukee is facing a public reprimand for allegedly having sex with a female client while he represented her in a divorce case.

Othman Atta faces eight counts of misconduct. The Office of Lawyer Regulation, in a complaint filed Monday, alleges Atta in April 2010 took the case of a woman who filed a divorce petition against her husband. After the pair separated, the woman’s husband moved to Jordan and she obtained a judgment against him in that country.

By September 2010, according to the OLR complaint, Atta and the client’s relationship “became increasingly personal.” The pair became Facebook friends and the woman sent links to Victoria’s Secret products in an email. Eventually, they had “sexual relations,” according to the complaint.

Atta is the executive director of the Milwaukee’s Islamic society, which caters to local Muslims and their religious and community needs. He said Wednesday afternoon that he was not aware of the OLR complaint, but had been fighting hard to refute the woman’s claims.

“Basically what happened is this person made all kinds of allegations,” Atta said. “I refuted things I could refute … to show she was lying.”

According to the complaint, the relationship continued into 2013, as did his representation of the woman. The pair frequently talked on the phone, according to the complaint, “with a majority of the calls being lengthy and early in the morning after midnight,” and they spent a lot of time together.

Eventually, the woman’s husband’s attorney, Thomas Napierala, found out about the relationship through his daughter and others in the Muslim community. Napierala asked Atta about the relationship, and Atta denied it, according to the complaint. He also denied it in a hearing in front of Milwaukee County Circuit Judge Frederick Rosa, calling the accusations “despicable.” Rosa granted a stipulated dismissal and ordered Atta to file paperwork in the case in 30 days.

By that time, though, Atta and the woman’s relationship deteriorated, and by May 2013, he had yet to file the paperwork. The woman inquired and Atta did not respond. He finally sent the proposed paperwork to the woman on July 1, 2013.

Rosa signed the paperwork July 16, 2013. In August, the woman filed a complaint with the OLR. Atta denied the allegations and said the woman “wanted to marry him and told him if he did not agree to the marriage she would file false accusations against him.”

While not going into details, Atta said Wednesday that the woman was lying. He said he was “shocked” that a complaint was filed.

Atta graduated from Marquette University Law School in 1994. The Wisconsin Law Journal named him as a Leader in the Law in 2007 for his work on civil rights cases.

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