Shocking story of a Yazidi girl: Sold and raped in Baghdad

The Iraqi Observatory for Victims of Human Trafficking on Wednesday revealed the details of a Yazidi girl who was sold and raped in Baghdad after she was lured from the Kurdistan Region, north of Iraq.

It all began when the  32-year-old victim fled to the Dohuk Governorate in the Kurdistan Region after Sinjar in Mosul fell under the ISIS’ grip.

In 2015, she participated in a protest organized in Irbil to demand freeing the Yazidis abducted by ISIS. She was arrested by security forces who later released later.

“After I was released, I went to a humanitarian organization that operates in Irbil that has a branch in Baghdad. The organization sent me to the capital in 2017 with a Yazidi driver to hold an interview with a foreign embassy to attain asylum,” she said in her account.

“After arriving in Baghdad, the driver took me to a residential apartment in a building in the center of the capital and claimed it was the branch of the aforementioned organization. However, I was surprised when I saw another Yazidi man who gave the driver a huge sum of money,” she added, noting that the money was her pricetag.

Severe abuse

At the time, all she could do was refuse to eat but the man who took her “severely beat her on her head and different areas of her body and tied her hands and feet.”

“On the third day, I had to eat because I was exhausted due to hunger. The man offered me a meal which I did not know contained a drug that made me lose consciousness. I was naked when I woke up and there were alcoholic beverages near me. I realized I was raped by four people, and this went on for three months,” she said.

“The rape and the severe abuse made me suffer from dangerous internal injuries so the man had to take me to the medical city and claimed he was my father, considering the age difference. I tried to tell the doctors and patients in the hall that I was a victim of human trafficking but no one believed me as the criminal who bought me had told them I was mentally disturbed.”

“In November 2017, a security force team came into the building after someone called them because they heard me scream and plead for help. They freed me and took my statement and arrested the perpetrators who had forged a contract claiming I was married to one of them,” she added.

According to her, the criminals were released a few months later for large sums of money and they escaped to an unknown destination while the case against them is pending till now.