The rest of the “Chibok girls” kidnapped by Muslim terrorists in 2014 are not coming home.
That’s the word from a Boko Haram commander who recently was arrested by Nigerian security forces.
A report from the worldwide Christian ministry Barnabas Fund said the captured terrorist told police that the rest of the girls, thought to be around 100, “have been indoctrinated and married to Boko Haram fighters.”
The kidnapping of 276 school girls happened in April 2014.
They were mainly Christian children attending a government secondary school in Chibok in northeast Nigeria.
Since then, about 160 have escaped or were rescued.
Those who escaped told stories of being whipped by their captors, forced into marriage and being subjected to mock executions.
WND reported in 2017 when 82 were rescued or released from the Boko Haram jihadists.
The girls, who inspired the #BringBackOurGirls movement, were freed after some Boko Haram suspects held by authorities were released, government officials reported at the time.
Then-first lady Michelle Obama tweeted a picture of herself holding a placard with the #BringBackOurGirls appeal.
As WND reported in 2016, Nigerian Bishop Matthew Hassan Kukah, while on a U.S. tour, charged Western governments weren’t doing enough to get the girls back.
Kukah said “political intrigues” involving the U.S. and European governments have “relegated the fate of the girls to the chessboard of politics.”
He told WND at the time: “We must not treat the fate of these girls in isolation or even Boko Haram’s strategy of abducting these girls. Our children remain at great risk in Nigeria, but especially girls who are often married off at young ages as reluctant brides.”
Fourteen-year-old Salwa chugged the bleach for as long as she could. She ignored the agonizing burn going from her throat to stomach. She tuned out the sound of gunfire outside her kitchen window. It wasn’t the Syrian war she was trying to escape. It was her marriage.
Her 27-year-old husband was drunk again and wanted to have sex. If she said no, he’d beat her — drag her around the floor by her hair, slam her head against the wall or whip her with his belt. So she said she’d be right back and poisoned herself.
“I returned to the bedroom and thought, this will be the last time,” said Salwa. But she didn’t die.
Salwa, whose name has been changed for her protection, is now 20 years old. She is a refugee — and one of the more than 40 percent of Syrian girls in Lebanon forced into early marriage due to the Syrian civil war, according to UNICEF. That’s nearly double the rate of early marriage in Lebanon since the crisis began.
Marriage is seen as a way to protect girls from sexual assault — and give parents one less mouth to feed. In fact, Lebanon’s struggling economy, coupled with the United Nations’ shortage of aid, can leave refugees desperate for a dowry.
Now, more than ever, Syrian girls are vulnerable to sexual assault. In some Middle Eastern cultures, girls who have sex before marriage are shamed — even if they’re raped. So marriage can save a girl’s virginity and, by extension, her family’s reputation.
In Syria, armed groups use rape as a weapon of war to panic and intimidate people. And in Lebanon, refugees are more likely to get sexually harassed.
“A landlord, for example, sees families who can’t pay rent and may decide to say, ‘OK, you can’t pay me money for the rent, but you can engage in sexual relationships with me,’” Latrous said. “As a way to protect their daughters, it’s a choice out of desperation that some families choose to marry them off.”
Girls below 18 are more likely to be victims of domestic violence than women. And the wider the age difference, the more likely they’ll be abused, according to Human Rights Watch.
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