Um Haleema, a Boko Haram kidnap victim has vowed to keep her pregnancy.She was just 16 years old when she was kidnapped.
She was captured trying to escape, along with three of her friends, as Boko Haram burned and ransacked her village.
During her captivity, Um Haleema was forced to watch men, women and children slaughtered. She was forced into marriage. Forced to wait on a “husband” she hated. But while she watched, she says she was also waiting — for a chance to break free. And after six long months, it finally came.
“I had planned my escape from the beginning, “There was a time my husband spent two weeks away, so I attempted to escape but guards returned me and beat me.”
Eventually, her captors’ vigilance began to slip and she managed to escape. In her fear, all she remembers is walking for what felt like days until she finally reached safety.
She arrived home to discover that her father had been killed by the same Boko Haram militants who had held her captive for almost a year. She also found she had become pregnant by her Boko Haram husband.
Now, seven months along in her pregnancy, she has agreed to speak to CNN..
The fear, she says, is still with her. This time, though, it’s the men in her own community she is scared of.
“People in this village are rejecting me because of the pregnancy, “Some will be happy to have me dead. Many people are even saying that I should go for an abortion.”
It’s an option she refuses to contemplate, even though she says local men have let it be known they will not tolerate the children of Boko Haram living amongst them. She says they have threatened to kill both her and her baby.
On hearing that her daughter had been abducted, Um Haleema’s mother says she immediately feared the worst.
“Anybody captured by Boko Haram is presumed dead,”They abducted my step-daughter‎ and my daughter. They took a total of seven girls from this house.We heard about one girl who died after she attempted an abortion, losing both the mother and the baby,” she says. “The girl was the only child to her mother, so that scared us. If God wishes, she will give birth safely. Life is in the hands of God alone.”
When CNN spoke to the men Um Haleema accused of threatening her in her village. Part of a local vigilante group, they denied making the threats.Their leader agreed to speak CNN.
“I am not aware of any woman in this village who was impregnated by them,” he said. “If any woman is found to be pregnant, in our tradition, the pregnancy is considered Haram (unlawful), hence we cannot accept them wholeheartedly because they can be like baby snakes.”
When the interview ended and the camera stopped rolling, the vigilante leader said that his group didn’t believe Um Haleema had been forced into marriage and said that she and her unborn child will always be viewed with suspicion. But he refused to comment on what he and his men might do about it.