JINHA

NEWS CENTER – With one year gone by since Boko Haram's kidnapping of 267 schoolgirls from Chibok, Nigeria, reports are emerging detailing the gang's system for raping girls and forcing them into war, including raids of their own villages.

Since 2014, Boko Haram has abducted and held captive over 2,000 women and girls. Of the 267 kidnapped from Chibok on the day made famous by the #BringBackOurGirlsCampaign, 57 have managed to escape. Those who have escaped have spoken of their own trauma and say that while scholarships and psychological treatment have been made available to some Chibok survivors, many women who have escaped from Boko Haram are left without resources.

Even if the social media campaign forced the Nigerian and international governments to acknowledge the scope of the problem, they have still taken no steps to rescue the women or rehabilitate survivors. The Chibok girls' fate, and that of many more abducted women, is still unknown.

A 19-year-old young woman who was abducted along with her younger sister while at a friend's wedding and held in Boko Haram captivity for four weeks, spoke in a recent Amnesty International video about the Boko Haram system in which she was raped and then forced to fight. She was given a three-week training in a town in Adamawa State, involving training in the use of bombs and guns.

"The commander said we should learn from them about killing and slaughtering. They told me how to attack towns and villages," said the woman, who gave her name as Aisha Yusuf. "I went on one operation to my own village. We women and girls were placed in the back of a group of fighters. We never experienced any casualties because most times we didn't even get much resistance from soldiers."

Aisha's sister was one of the many people killed for not complying with Boko Haram's system. She said the victims were buried in a mass grave, whose smell frequently reached the house where she was staying.

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