Boko Haram Molested, Beat and Traumatised Us - Female Survivors Speak Out

A New report by Human Rights Watch reveals the damage done to girls and women abducted by Boko Haram .

Its report, Those Terrible Weeks in Their Camp: Boko Haram Violence Against Women and Girls in North-east Nigeria, is based on interviews with 30 women and girls abducted between April 2013 and April 2014, plus 16 people who witnessed kidnappings.

The women and girls were held in eight different camps for periods ranging from two days to three months, after being taken from their homes, while working on farms, fetching water or at school.
A 15-year-old girl who was held in a Boko Haram camp for four weeks in 2013 said....



“After we were declared married I was ordered to live in his cave but I always managed to avoid him. He soon began to threaten me with a knife to have sex with him, and when I still refused he brought out his gun, warning that he would kill me if I shouted. Then he began to rape me every night. He was a huge man in his mid-30s and I had never had sex before. It was very painful and I cried bitterly because I was bleeding afterwards.”
 One woman said:

“I was dragged to the camp leader who told me the reason I was brought to the camp was because we Christians worship three gods. When I objected to his claim, he tied a rope around my neck and beat me with a plastic cable until I almost passed out. An insurgent who I recognised from my village convinced me to accept Islam lest I should be killed. So I agreed.”


 A 19-year-old said:
“I was told to approach a group of five men we saw in a nearby village and lure them to where the insurgents were hiding.” She told the young men that she needed help. “When they followed me for a short distance, the insurgents swooped on them. Once we got back to the camp, they tied the legs and the hands of the captives and slit the throats of four of them as they shouted ‘Allahu Akbar’. Then I was handed a knife to kill the last man. I was shaking with horror and couldn’t do it. The camp leader’s wife took the knife and killed him.”

 One 15-year-old girl said:
“I could not stop crying even when the insurgents threatened to kill me if I did not keep quiet. I kept on thinking, is it not better to die now than to face whatever terrible things they could do to me when we get to their camp? Even after I escaped from them and live far away from my village, I am still afraid. I think of death many times. My father tries. He encourages me to forget everything, but it is not easy for me. I have terrible dreams at night.
Many of those interviewed by HRW showed signs of stress and anguish, according to the report, although only the Chibok girls had been offered limited counselling.