Yazidi girl in Iraq (file)
Yazidi girl in Iraq (file)Reuters

Kidnapped women are generally not allowed to speak with their families – except when the objective is simply to increase suffering, as is the case with Islamic State (IS, or ISIS) captor/torturers of young girls.

Among the many acts of ISIS horror, it has perhaps been forgotten that an unknown number of teenaged Yazidi girls are being held by their ISIS captors in a secret prison in Mosul, Iraq.

Mayat, 17, was permitted – forced, actually – to describe to an Italian journalist three “rooms of horror” in the house, where she and her fellow victims are taken several times a day and raped.

The story was reported by The Clarion Project, a non-profit organization dedicated to exposing the dangers of Islamic extremism. 

Mayat was first forced to call her parents, who had somehow made it to safety in Kurdistan. She said her captors made her place the call “to hurt us even more. They told us to describe in detail to our parents what they are doing.” 

Mayat’s parents gave her number to an Ital­ian journalist, whom she told, “Part of me would like to die immediately, to sink beneath the ground and stay there. But another part that still hopes to be saved, and to be able to hug my parents once more.” 

“They treat us like slaves. We are always ‘given’ to different men…they threaten us and beat us if we try to resist. Often I wish they would beat me so hard I will die. But they are cowards even in this. None of them have the courage to end our suffering.”

A few women and girls have managed to escape, reporting that those who agree to convert to Islam are being sold to Islamic State fighters for as little as $25.

Those that do not face never-ending rape, beatings and eventual death. Some of the young girls are so traumatized that they have stopped speaking, while others have tried to commit suicide.

The Kurdish Regional Government's High Council of Women’s Affairs is raising money in the hope that the women can be bought from their ISIS captors.

For Mayat, it may be too late: “They have already killed my body. They are now killing my soul,” she said.