Shadha Salim is a Yezidi survivor who returned to Iraq less than a year ago. She was living with an Islamic State (ISIS) man in the town of Al Mayadin in Syria.
She was pregnant to him, but aborted the child just before leaving Syria. She came back to Iraq to be reunited with her family in Duhok.
Salim says that getting pregnant to an ISIS man was the only way to stop others from raping the Yezidi women.
“None of the Yezidi girls and women like to have children from Daesh [ISIS]. But because their lives were treated as trade goods, she would be given to a Daesh man who would savagely rape her, and by the evening, she would be given to another one to be raped. I mean, sometimes in one day, seven Daesh infidels would rape one Yezidi woman. Therefore the Yezidi women would take the option of having babies from Daesh.”
Salim says that she was raped by 12 different men. It only stopped when one man realised that she was pregnant and stopped selling her to others.
Salim, who comes from the village of Kocho in Shingal area, says her sister was also kidnapped by ISIS. But she says she committed suicide by throwing herself into the river in Raqqa.
Salim received support from her family but many others aren’t so lucky.
That’s where a safe house called Gula Nissani, which means April flower, steps in to provide support to others like Salim.
It is located in Seje, a Christian village in Duhok governorate in the northern Kurdish Region of Iraq.
The center has so far received 15 women and five children, including a pregnant Yezidi woman who gave birth at the centre and was resettled to Canada.
Gula Nissani is run by a non-governmental organization called MedEast.
MedEast director Dr. Paul Martin Kingery is urging Yezidi mothers still in Syria, with children fathered by ISIS men, to return and not be afraid of their child being taken away or facing persecution.
Anette Axelsson, a Swedish woman who settled in Duhok governorate, runs the safe house.
“We become like family, we become like sisters. We cry together, we laugh together. We have an atmosphere of respect, and I think above everything, that is the most important thing. To be in an environment where you are respected and loved. So we help them with, take them to doctors. We take them through this journey of healing,” she says.
Volunteer teams from the US and Europe visit the safe house and provide different kinds of services, including psychological therapy, dental care and other skills and activities.
