During the early hours of Friday, August 13th, 2021, my dearest friend Mariam Abdulrab was kidnapped from her front door step, and murdered less than an hour later. Mariam was a light in our community; constantly uplifting others around her in their toughest times. Mariam’s passing was untimely, unjust, and above all, preventable. 

She was victim to hands of a registered sex offender, with ample prior offenses, who was released early on parole in November 2020. His prior convictions include child molestation, attempted rape of a 5 year old, and attempted rape of a 7 year old. The severity of his prior convictions are horrifying within themself. This individual should not have been given the opportunity to walk amongst society freely in our community. Especially within the Atlanta night life community, where many come to seek solace. 

The purpose of this petition is to establish legislation requiring Registered Sex Offenders to have an ‘identifier’ on their State Issued ID’s/Driver’s license. This establishes a protective barrier between Sexually Violent Predators and the community during vulnerable times. It will allow establishments to be aware of this kind of individual and potentially turn away potential predators. 

It is imperative that we do all we can to reduce the risk of something like this ever happening again, while enforcing liability to owners who let predators inside. We must all stay vigilant and do all we can do to advocate for change for the safety of our community and to ensure what happened to Mariam never happens again.

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UPDATE: FEB 22, 2022 — 

We want to start off by saying how much we appreciate every single one of you that have signed our petition and shared it around to your peers whether that was through social media or even word of mouth. Since the terrible day we had Mariam taken away from us, her family and friends have worked tirelessly to figure out how a known child rapist and registered sex offender, can walk around freely in our communities without any real repercussions that will keep the public safe or proper monitoring to keep this monster from reoffending/ hurting someone else. From here we started our movement, Mariam Forever, to inform the public on the different, broken sectors of our criminal justice system and how it can yield more disastrous consequences for the vulnerable women and children of Georgia’s population and possibly even the entire country. The support has been tremendous since this started and our mission to create substantial change feels more achievable than ever. We have made great strides and helped raised awareness on why situations/ preventable tragedies like Mariam’s occurs in the first place and are still finding ways on what we can do about it as a community. Our team wants to emphasize the word preventable when talking about this because something so unthinkable could have been avoided with her and many others that our loved ones have lost. Whether it strays from a judge making a poor decision when convicting in court, the lack of hustle to deal with backed up cases in different departments, or to top it off unreliable record-keeping of criminal histories that furthers the cycle of bad decisions being made, something needs to change and quick. The idea of losing someone in such a way use to be a far-fetched nightmare but now we know something so inconceivable is possible even for others and requires the public’s immediate attention in order to stop further tragedies down the line. The system needs an improvement all together and absolutely needs all the support from people like you to push the change that’ll protect our families and other innocent human beings. Our current focus is to have our policies that will help identify and monitor sex offenders, sponsored and on the floor for debate at the State Capitol for the Georgia General Assembly to vote and pass on until it becomes a bill that our state will use. We have been informed that the session will go on until April 4th of 2022, but we would like to have the bill on floor before the mid-session debate. We’ve been working hard to put these policies in front of the right people and as promising as it sounds for us, we still need the support from the general public to really show that this legislation is something needed in our state and possibly even across the nation. Our group will begin sharing the petition again to add more supporters to the cause and show our strength in numbers. The goal is to help these State Representatives and government officials understand that these policies have an abundance of support for good reason and hopefully encourages them to promote change through legislation. Again, we cannot thank you guys enough and wouldn’t have got this far without you. Mariam didn’t deserve what happened to her not one bit and she will forever be missed and loved as it still pains many of us that something like this even happened in the first place. Together we can make sure this doesn’t happen to anybody else. To no more unnecessary deaths. A better future.

Best Regards,

Mariam Forever