This week marks four years since the abduction of Nigerian Christian schoolgirl Leah Sharibu, who has been in captivity ever since and received a great deal of media attention around the world. However, there are thousands more like her and Agnes John is one such girl. She was kidnapped as a teenager but managed to escape. However, she did not receive the homecoming welcome she had expected...
When Agnes speaks about that day in early January 2019 when Boko Haram militants came to her village in north-eastern Nigeria, she seems almost dispassionate, as if she is talking about someone else's life:
"We were working in the fields of our farm when armed men approached us. They kidnapped three of us. They later killed my two friends. I am the only one living."
Agnes, then 19, was taken to face a plethora of horrors during her time at the Boko Haram camps.
"We suffered a lot during our time in captivity. They forced us to work hard for them," Agnes explains to Open Doors.
"They kept pushing us to renounce Christ ... I was given to a woman who was married to one of the fighters. In secret, the woman was still a Christian. She told me to fake it - that if these people forced me to renounce Christ, I should say yes, but deep down within me I should hold on to Christ. And then, during times of Muslim prayer, I should pray to Christ instead of their 'Allah'."
The woman told Agnes that if she did not want to be killed like her friends, she needed to do what the fighters said. But even when Agnes faked conversion to Islam - which kept her alive - it did not make things easier for her.
"I suffered a lot of violence in their hands, especially when sometimes I still mentioned the name Jesus," Agnes said. "A few times they beat me up until I was unconscious."
After two years in captivity, she finally had the opportunity to escape.
"The day I escaped, I was sent with another young girl to go and look for vegetables in the forest. We were escorted by two armed guys. When we went a bit far into the forest, they said we should stay and pick vegetables and that they had to go somewhere but would come back for us," Agnes recalls.
"They left us alone. Then the girl told me to run with her and find a way out to freedom. After a long walk we approached a village just close to my village.
"I couldn't recognise many things, because everything had changed. The village was deserted. The buildings were all destroyed but we decided to walk into the village anyway."
Agnes and her friend saw soldiers there who brought them to a small camp where the Nigerian army kept abducted people who escaped or were rescued. Agnes had to wait until a family member could come and officially identify her. She says it was her dream that one day she would be reunited with her family and her mother would run towards her with open arms and her father would hug her tightly.
No one came for Agnes.
"The day I found freedom, I felt so much joy in my heart," Agnes told Open Doors. "I stayed with the soldiers, but nobody from my family cared to come and pick me up.
"I began to wonder ... Nobody came to see me. My mum and dad were too far away, in another town. But even relatives and friends who were staying nearby refused to come and welcome me because they were regarding me as a 'Boko Haram wife'. They had already condemned me."
This is a common occurrence among Boko Haram kidnap survivors. Open Doors often meets young women who bravely escape, only to find that their communities, and even their families, reject and shame them.
The stigma attached to these women is deeply rooted in the perception that they have become indoctrinated and that any children born in captivity carry the seed of Boko Haram.
Finally, Agnes' sister came to fetch her and informed that their father had died. Returning home Agnes had to face challenges she had not expected.
"When I came back home, I refused to step out of the house because of how people were talking about me," she said.
"I wasn't shown love at all. No one came to greet me. All they did was to laugh and sigh with contempt.
"At that point I told my sister that if I had known that this is how I would be treated, I would have remained in the forest or would rather be dead.
"For a time, I even left my home and community to see if I would find peace. But I haven't. Luckily, these days things are becoming better, even though sometimes people still insult me."
Recovery has not been easy for Agnes. Her relationship with her mother is still strained at times. The Christian charity Open Doors has helped Agnes - and many other young women like her - with trauma care to support their physical and emotional recovery.
"When girls are kidnapped, a deep sadness and desperation fall upon the family," says Henrietta Blyth, CEO of Open Doors UK and Ireland.
"Men often see it as their fault for not having been able to protect their children adequately. The victims themselves, too, carry scars and trauma for a very long time, and can be stigmatised and rejected by communities. That rejection makes the victims even more vulnerable and leaves Christian communities fractured."
Agnes' hope is that there will be an end to the rejection she is currently going through, and that her family members and community will realise the extent of the damage that their rejection has caused her.
Zara Sarvarian works for Open Doors UK & Ireland, part of Open Doors International, a global NGO network which has supported and strengthened persecuted Christians for over 60 years and works in over 60 countries. Open Doors provides practical support to persecuted Christians such as food, medicines, trauma care, legal assistance, safe houses and schools, as well as spiritual support through Christian literature, training and resources.
