An American woman who was held captive by the Taliban for five years said she was raped and forced to abort her unborn baby after her husband refused to join their terrorist group.
Caitlan Coleman, her Canadian husband Josh Boyle and their three children recently were rescued and returned home to Canada, according to The Guardian.
In a new interview, Coleman remembered some of the abuses that they endured, including being raped and forced to abort her unborn baby girl, Martyr.
Coleman and her husband were kidnapped in 2012 while backpacking through Afghanistan; she was pregnant at the time. She gave birth to their child and later two others while being held in an underground prison in the Middle East, according to the report.
About two years into their captivity, Coleman said their captors raped her and forced her to abort one of her unborn children after they discovered that she and her husband had been sending out secret notes asking for help.
“We had a pen they didn’t know about and we were taking little scraps of paper and trying to hand out notes to anyone and everyone that wasn’t one of the guards or commanders involved in killing Martyr,” Coleman said. “But then they took us, separated us, and beat us and that was when the assault on me happened because they wanted us to stop.”
Here’s more from the report:
Speaking to [the Toronto Star], Coleman said their kidnappers had forced her to have an abortion after Boyle rejected attempts by the Haqqani network to recruit him. “They were very angry because Joshua had been asked to join them, to work for them, and he said no,” she said.
After she lost the baby – whom the couple named Martyr – she said her captors bragged about what they had done. “They killed her by dosing the food. They put massive doses of estrogen in the food.”
The Taliban has denied these claims, saying in a statement that the couple had a “natural miscarriage” after contracting an illness that could not be treated in the rural area they were being held.
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According to another report, Coleman hid her pregnancy with their third child, a boy. In a letter sent to Boyle’s parents, the couple explained how Boyle helped his wife deliver their baby boy in the dark, with the only light coming from a flashlight held between his teeth.
“The astonished captors were good and brought all our post-partum needs, so he is now fat and healthy, praise God,” Boyle wrote in the letter to his parents. “We are trying to keep spirits high for the children …”
Despite their terrible circumstances, Coleman said she wanted to have children with her husband.
“It was a decision we made,” Coleman said. “We did think about it and talk about it and it’s difficult to explain all the reasons, but, for me, a large part was the fact that it has always been important to me to have a large family.”
Coleman, her husband and three children now are back in Canada, trying to create a new life for themselves.
Tragically, Coleman and her unborn daughter are just two of many who have suffered from forced abortions at the hands of terrorists.
Earlier this month, the Christian Post reported a Yazidi teen named Helin, 15, was kidnapped by ISIS fighters in Syria and forced to abort three of her unborn babies. She recently was rescued after her terrorist captors abandoned her and other sex slaves while fleeing Raqqa, Syria.
In 2016, the New York Times published several accounts of women who ISIS fighters captured, sold into sex slavery, raped and then forced to have abortions.
LifeNews also has reported women’s stories of forced abortions under ISIS. A 21-year-old woman known as Bushra said her friend was three-months pregnant when she was captured by ISIS and forced to abort her unborn baby.
Another report in 2015 explained how doctors in the Middle East were doing illegal abortions on girls as young as 9 who were kidnapped and raped by ISIS fighters.
