Escaped Yazidi teenager speaks of horrific ordeal as ISIS sex slave

A Yazidi teenager who was kidnapped by ISIS, raped and became pregnant has shared her story.

Women and children from the minority Yazidi sect, fleeing the violence in the Iraqi town of Sinjar, near the Iraqi-Syrian border crossing in Fishkhabour, Dohuk provinceReuters

Nihad Narakat Shamo Alawsi was just 15 when she was captured alongside her family when Islamic State took control of her hometown of Sinjar, northern Iraq, in 2014. She was sold into sex slavery for the equivalent of £540 and was impregnated by a militant who raped her on multiple occasions.

"I felt like committing suicide, but every time I did I thought of my mother," Alawsi said in a video released by the Amar International Charitable Foundation.

"I felt that I had a criminal from Daesh [ISIS] inside me. I tried many times to abort it."

These attempts meant she was hospitalised for four days "due to the pills and other steps I'd taken", but they were ultimately unsuccessful and she gave birth to a boy.

"They brought the baby to me, and he looked up at me. I felt he was part of me and I loved him," Alawsi, now 17, said.

She managed to flee Iraq to Kurdistan with her family, however she had to leave her son in Iraq.

She is now working for Amar and the Women Against Radicalisation network.

"Inshallah, this year I want to go back to school and finish my studies. My thoughts and fears remains with my missing siblings and my three cousins. I feel the same about all the Yazidi people under the control of Daesh. We are all one," she said.

The UN recently officially labelled the treatment of the Yazidi people by ISIS a genocide.

"Genocide has occurred and is ongoing", said Paulo Pinheiro, chair of the commission that researched the treatment of Yazidis. "ISIS has subjected every Yazidi woman, child or man that it has captured to the most horrific of atrocities."

Thousands of Yazidi women and girls in Syria are still being held captive and abused, often as sex slaves. At least 30 mass graves of Yazidi people have been found in the country and 3,200 women and girls are thought to remain held by militants.