Canadian judge dismisses sexual assault charges against former Afghanistan hostage Joshua Boyle whose wife claimed he ‘raped and beat’ her after they returned from Taliban captivity
- The charges included sexual assault, rape and false imprisonment
- A Canadian judge dropped them on Thursday due to an apparent lack of evidence
- Caitlan Coleman said her husband repeatedly attacked her after they were freed by the Taliban
- She said he forced her to have children in captivity and that he was a Taliban sympathizer
A Canadian judge has dismissed the criminal charges against former Taliban hostage Joshua Boyle in a case involving allegations he assaulted his American wife.
The family’s strange story began when Joshua and his wife Caitlan were captured by terrorists while visiting Afghanistan when she was pregnant with their first child in 2012.
They were held captive for five years, during which she gave birth to three children and lost another during pregnancy.
In October 2017, they were rescued by the Pakistani military and returned to Canada, which Boyle is a citizen of.
But over the next two months, Caitlan – who is American – claims she was sexually assaulted and beaten by her husband.
She reported him to the police in Canada, but this week a judge dismissed the charges against him claiming a lack of evidence.
Caitlan Coleman accused her husband Joshua Boyle of raping and beating her after they returned to Canada from Afghanistan, where they had been held in captivity for five years. A judge dismissed the charges on Thursday
When the family was first rescued, what exactly happened to them in captivity was a mystery.
Boyle – who had taken an interest in Islam before he met Caitlan – refused to go on a US military plane, claiming he feared he would be arrested if he set foot in America.
The family retreated to Canada, against the wishes of Caitlan’s parents in Pennsylvania who had long blamed their son-in-law for taking their daughter to Afghanistan for a trip when she was pregnant.
But over the course of the next several months, their marriage fell apart.
Caitlan eventually broke her silence to say she was more afraid of her husband in captivity than of the terrorists who were keeping her there.
While in captivity, they made these hostage videos with two of their three children. Caitlan also miscarried a baby she says her guards intentionally killed by feeding her poisoned meals
In an interview in May, She said he was a ‘Taliban sympathizer’ when they ventured to the region but became more abusive towards her than her captors after they were taken hostage when she was six months pregnant in 2012.
Prior to captivity, I did want to have a family with Josh but during captivity, I was not given a choice as to whether or not we would have children in captivity, if they would have to go through that too.
‘That certainly not something I wanted for my children,’ she said.
Asked bluntly if she was raped, she said: ‘Yes. I am not saying that I physically struggled but I am saying that I found relations with him pretty abhorrent but I was not given a choice.
‘Not only was it psychological, it was physical, it was sexual. I was actually more afraid of him than of the captors,’ she said.
She also told how he had gone from claiming to want to get the ‘inside story’ of the Taliban from a journalistic perspective to sympathizing with the group.
In the 2012, the pair went on what she thought would be a trip to Asia when he suggested they ‘dip into’ Afghanistan. She was six months pregnant at the time
‘He believed that the Taliban were misrepresented in the west, that he could get the real story.