"I didn't expect we would come out of that blockade alive." Forced to abandon their children "As the blockades continued the situation became more difficult, there was nothing there, we were eating grass, it was a difficult time, there wasn't any milk. "When she was born, there were blockades, there wasn't enough food," she remembers. Peter Galbraith, a former US diplomat who first worked in the region during the 1980s, is trying to help women like Berivan and their children. "Maria can attend school and I can do something for myself, and we can live together." "We just want to live like other people, a free life," she says. She is desperately hoping to be allowed to resettle in Australia. But her daughter was not.įor a portion of the Yazidi community, the idea of having the child of an ISIS member in their midst was too much to bear.īerivan faced an impossible choice: abandon Maria and return to what remains of the Yazidi community or be cast out and find a way to raise her child alone.īerivan could not leave Maria. When Maria and her mother were finally freed from ISIS captivity, Berivan was accepted back into the Yazidi community. ISIS militants massacred many Yazidi men, and thousands of women and children were abducted and enslaved. In 2014, the Yazidis were the target of a genocide by Islamic State. All of the women are Yazidis who were enslaved by members of Islamic State and repeatedly raped, raising children like Maria who were born from one of those rapes.
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