Yesim Arikut-Treece, a psychologist who worked with women in the camp for the foundation for a year and
a half, says she thinks 16,000 additional Yazidis are living in satellite camps around Khanke camp.
She says a lot of women who have children who are the product of rape by Isis do not return to the
community.
“They stay with the Isis families because they know the community does not accept the children,” she adds.
“It is a very complicated problem. They are a minority group under threat already – the only way they can
hold on to their identity is by holding on to their rules. But both the mothers and the children are suffering
a lot. I have heard from Yazidi women who were captured who left their children behind that there were
women who stayed because they were unable to leave their children behind. Women who return to the
Yazidi community with babies are stuck in safe houses or the child is put in an orphanage.”
Arikut-Treece says she contacted Kurdish officials after a Yazidi woman she worked with wanted to know if
her child was safe in an orphanage but they refused to disclose anything. They were worried about what
Yazidi families might do to non-Yazidi children, she adds.
She says she has heard “horrendous stories” of the Sinjar massacre from people who had witnessed the
suffering firsthand and had many close relatives who remain missing. “Everyone has a traumatising story,”
she says. “People have flashbacks. When they realised Isis was coming and killing people, they started
fleeing but not everyone could fit in the cars to escape.
“There was a very sad story of a pregnant woman who left her husband behind because he could not fit in
the car. The last words he said were ‘look after the children for me’. She had one child with her. She loved
him very much and they had a very happy marriage. She was very traumatised and suicidal. The only thing
that made her continue to live was to look after the children. Nobody has heard from the husband since.
Presumably, he is dead.”
Arikut-Treece expresses horror at the sexual slavery Isis subjected Yazidi women to, saying it was
“unbelievable” it happened in the 21st century. “They were very organised,” she says. “They organised slave
markets. They brought the girls from one location to another. The person who bought the girl or the women
resold them again and again. One Yazidi girl’s best friend was beheaded by Isis in front of her. There were
beatings and tortures. They saw their husbands, brothers and fathers killed in front of them.”
Nadia Murad, who survived the Isis torture camps, chronicled the horrors faced by women like herself who
were sold in markets, and even on Facebook, sometimes for as meagre amount as $20 in her book The Last
Girl. The Nobel Peace Prize winner is an advocate for the Yazidi minority and for refugee and women’s
rights.