When they were torn from their families by Islamic State militants last summer, thousands of Yazidi girls and women were raped, tortured, forcibly married and enslaved.

But after eight months in hell, some have struggled back to their surviving relatives in Iraqi Kurdistan: sick, broken, traumatized — and pregnant.

The youngest of these is 9, according to volunteers working in the refugee camps and abandoned buildings where they are sheltering.

“This girl is so young she could die if she delivers a baby,” said Yousif Daoud, a Canadian-based aid worker who recently returned from the region. “Even a caesarian section is dangerous. The abuse she has suffered left her mentally and physically traumatized.”

This week Islamic State released more than 200 Yazidi captives, including 40 children. The others were mostly elderly, and all bore signs of abuse and neglect, according to a report from Associated Press.

Up to 500 kidnapped girls and women had already found their way back to their devastated homeland in Kurdistan, where about 40,000 Yazidis were attacked and besieged in August 2014, as the militants made a lightning assault on a minority they condemn as heretics. Hundreds were killed, and some 4,000 girls and women are still believed to be captive.

But the futures of those who return are dark in a community that highly values chastity and honour.

The plight is worst for those pregnant after repeated sexual assault, as many as 200. Although some Yazidi men have announced that they would marry women who return from the Islamic State, that is less likely if they are carrying their tormentors’ children.

“Sending back those girls and women is a way of shaming the whole community,” said Daoud, who spoke under a pseudonym to avoid losing the trust of the secretive religious sect.

That includes the children they are carrying against their will.

The Yazidis, a close-knit, conservative minority with roots in several ancient religions, believe in the purity of their line. Many of the pregnant women seek abortions to avoid the stigma. But finding medical care is difficult for destitute displaced people, and some could not terminate pregnancies in time. Others have resorted to dangerous methods or committed suicide.

“I don’t know what the future would be for their babies,” said Daoud. “The girls and women don’t want them. They have suffered so much they just want to forget. If they are married, their husbands won’t take them back if they are pregnant. And it’s clear that the babies will never be accepted.”

The kidnapped 9-year-old girl, he said, “was sexually abused by no fewer than 10 men. Most of them were front-line fighters or suicide bombers who are given girls as a reward. She was in very bad shape.”

This week a Kurdish aid group took her to Germany, where a medical charity is looking after her.

If she survives the ordeal, her outlook will be better than that of dozens of other pregnant, traumatized Yazidi women. Unless Canada or other Western countries are willing to accept them quickly as refugees — and allow their babies to be adopted — aid workers say, the militants’ jihad will reach into another generation.

In Toronto on Sunday, at 7.30 p.m., three Yazidis now living in Canada will give personal testimonies on the attacks on their community by Islamic State militants in Iraq. Mirza Ismail, chairman of the Yezidi Human Rights Organization-International, will also speak. The event is at B’nai Brith at 15 Hove St. in North York.

Abuse common in war zones

The horrors suffered by Yazidi girls and women are especially severe, but far from rare in conflict zones. Dr. Samantha Nutt, founder and executive director of War Child Canada, says brutality toward females is a “pattern of abuse and intimidation” that has spilled across borders.

“These primeval mechanisms are being used to threaten, abuse and traumatize,” she says. “It’s an attempt to erase an entire generation. When you rape a girl, it’s an entire family decimated, if not an entire community.”

Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading...

And she says, in many societies those girls, and the children born from abuse, face ongoing violence and abuse themselves. “Even at school they are stigmatized by teachers and fellow students. In Uganda, children who are a product of rape by (Lord’s Resistance Army rebels) have been locked in cages or set on fire, because they are so closely associated with the aggressor and the trauma.”

Recovery for traumatized rape victims, Nutt says, takes years, and those helping them must make a long-term commitment. “It’s difficult if there is ongoing violence and instability. If they feel they are at risk again, it eats at them every day.

“Investing in strengthening the rule of law and peace and reconciliation may not seem as relevant as food, water and blankets, but they must have a stable structure to make sure they are not economically and socially damaged for the rest of their lives.”

Read more about: