An American woman held hostage by the Taliban with her husband in Afghanistan for five years has told how he was a ‘sympathizer’ who raped her repeatedly, forcing her to have three more children.
Caitlan Coleman was rescued along with her husband Joshua Boyle and their three children in 2017, five years after being taken by Taliban militants.
She and her husband had gone to the region for a vacation and when they were rescued, they fled straight to Canada.
Since then, he has been charged with sexually assaulting her after their return and questions over his motives for the trip have emerged.
He is now awaiting his next court date in Ottawa on charges of assaulting, raping, drugging and unlawfully confining his wife, all of which he denies.
Caitlan, who is from Pennysylvania, is now speaking out against him.
In an interview with ABC’s Nightline that will air on Friday, she has told how 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.
Caitlan Coleman was rescued along with her husband Joshua Boyle and their three children in 2017, five years after being taken by Taliban militants
She also said that he forced her to have sex with him and that while she never physically resisted him, having to sleep with him was ‘abhorrent.’
‘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.
‘He believed that the Taliban were misrepresented in the west, that he could get the real story.
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
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
When the family returned to Canada, they claimed to have been close but Caitlan said afterwards she still felt like a ‘prisoner’. She escaped Joshua with her three children and reported to police how he had treated her. They are shown with Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau after arriving back in Canada in 2017
‘Go places that nobody else could go. Suddenly its like he sort of dropped any pretense of being a pacifist.
‘It’s like, when we were no longer around westerners, he could sort of drop his neutrality,’ she said.
Caitlan is now testifying against er husband
She says he forced her into meeting the people who would kidnap them and that she had no choice but to follow him because he was carrying all their money and passports.
She was six months pregnant at the time and they had been doing a tour of South Asia when he told her in 2012 they were going to ‘dip into’ Afghanistan.
‘He would always tell me, “I think they’re misrepresented in the West. I think they’re good people. When you meet them, you’re gonna see”.
‘So I saw. And they are, with the exception of my husband, the worst people that I’ve ever known in my life,’ she said.
Eventually, she said the captors began leaving them ‘alone’ but her husband was becoming increasingly violent.
Once back in Canada, she said he took on the role of her controller and captor.
‘He restricted pretty much everything. I had no freedom, as far as, you know, where I would go, who I would talk to, how I would dress, what I would say,’ she said.
‘I certainly felt like I was still a prisoner. There wasn’t actually a big change in my life from when we were still in Pakistan in the hands of the Haqqanis and when I was in the Embassy Suites Hotel [in Ottawa] with Josh,’ she said.
Boyle has denied being a Nazi sympathizer or raping his wife. His trial is on hiatus.