Adrift after enslavement, Yazidi teen says she can't go home
BARZAN, Syria (AP) — Roza Barakat’s tormentors have been defeated, but the horrors she endured still hold her captive.
She was 11 years old when she was captured and enslaved by the Islamic State group, along with thousands of other Yazidi women and girls taken when the militants overran northern Iraq in their brutal 2014 campaign.
Torn from her family in the town of Sinjar, the enclave of the ancient religious Yazidi minority, she was taken to Syria, sold multiple times and repeatedly raped. She bore a child, a boy she has since lost. Now, at 18, she speaks little of her native Kurdish dialect, Kurmanji.
With the defeat of IS in 2019, Barakat slipped into the shadows, opting to hide in the turmoil that followed the worst of the battles. As IS fighters were arrested, their wives and children were packed into detention camps. Barakat was free, but she couldn’t go home.
https://apnews.com/article/islamic-state-group-middle-east-europe-iraq-syria-64e612ac557d2d8de6bc3b597b8403e0
