Horror stories from Yazidi girls who escaped ISIS

Jalila, a 12 years-old, was sold to ISIS by a family friend while her and her family were trying to flee their village in Sinjar. Then her ordeal began. She was raped by jihadis.

“I told him not to touch me and begged him to let me go,” she said. “I told him to take me to my mother. I was a young girl, and I asked him, ‘What do you want from me?’ He spent three days having sex with me.” 

This is just one of the many horror stories collected by Human Right Watch around Dohuk, Northern Iraq. Hundreds of Yazidi who were able to escape ISIS arrived in the Kurdistan area where as many as 600,000 people from Sinjar are now living.  Amongst them also Adeba, whose story I wrote for Reuters Foundation in September. Adeba, 14 years-old, was able to run away before being rape. But too many didn’t share her luck.

Wafa, according to HRW, travelled throughout Iraq and ended up in Raqqa, the de-facto capital of the Islamic State in Syria. An older fighter assured Wafa that she would not be harmed but he repeatedly raped her nevertheless, she said.

“He was sleeping in the same place with me and told me not be afraid because I was like his daughter,” she said. “One day I woke up and my legs were covered in blood.” Wafa escaped three months after her abduction, but her parents, three brothers, and sister are still missing.

The report goes on and describe in details the systematic rape and violence against these women.

You can read it here.