The Yazidis are a people group targeted and massacred by ISIS with an estimate of 12,000- 14,000 who died or were captured, and 71% displaced. Many women and young girls were taken and trafficked as sex slaves for ISIS. Some eventually escaped to camps in Northern Iraq.
Novo’s partner ministry in the Middle East, NEO Leaders, started ministering among women and children in these camps by providing humanitarian aid, trauma counseling, basic literacy, and building relationships.
This is the story of some of the women captured by ISIS who NEO Leaders has been able to help—women who are now pointing to the hope of Christ and helping others.
“In my 25 years of providing care for trauma survivors, the stories of these women were some of the worst I’ve heard,” Alex, a clinical psychologist on staff with Novo, shared. He had flown into Lebanon to spend a week training NEO Leaders staff serving Yazidi women, and then to lead a group of 13 Yazidis who had been abducted through a week of trauma healing.
The Yazidis who were flown into Lebanon were all young. ISIS troops would generally take women from about the age 11-40 to serve the soldiers as “ISIS brides.” Their light colored hair and blue eyes were attractive to the soldiers. Sometimes a woman would remain with the same soldier permanently, if he really liked her. But more often than not, the women would be traded from man to man. Any children born were usually taken away. Boys would go to an ISIS camp, where they would be trained as soldiers, memorizing religious ideas starting at age three and using a gun by six or seven.
“When the women first arrived, they looked like frightened sheep all bunched together and could hardly look at us, especially me as a man,” Alex said. “As the days progressed, you saw these beautiful, bright young women emerge.”
On the night before the last day of the training, Alex went to bed overwhelmed by the enormous amount of shame these women were carrying. “You could see it in their demeanor, in the way they carried themselves and especially in their anxious, sullen, downcast faces,” he said. He woke up at 4 AM with an idea that needed to be written down. After much prayer with the team that morning, they decided to address shame.
They started with one of the female presenters acting as someone who had experienced something terrible, then asked the participants what she was feeling inside: “fear,” “anger,” “disgust,” and “self-hatred,” they blurted out. The presenter became more sullen and hunched over. They then asked what others in her community might be saying about her. The leaders were surprised at how quickly and forcefully the women jumped in: “You disgust me!” “You probably enjoyed it.” “We were starving while you were having a good time.” “You weren’t even here to bury your mother.” “How could you come back and bring such shame on your family?” The presenter got smaller and smaller as another presenter placed a large black trench coat over her, explaining that she believes what has been spoken over her. One of the Yazidi women began to cry.
After a pregnant silence, the team explained that those comments probably aren’t all true, and asked if anyone wanted to share something with the presenter (now doubled over by the weight of the black coat) to help her?
The silence continued. Then one woman raised her hand and said in a quiet voice, “We could tell her the truth.”
One-by-one, the women lined up and began speaking truth over the presenter: “No one should have to go through what you went through.” “They have no idea what really happened to you.” The presenter began to slowly come to life and sit up. Then one brave woman reached down and lifted the presenter’s head by the chin: “It wasn’t your fault.” There wasn’t a dry eye in the room.
Eventually the second presenter talked about the black coat of shame: “She feels so much better but she still feels shame.” They took the coat off of her and put it on an easel where they had drawn a rough outline of a man’s face/body. “One of the ways we can be relieved of shame is to put the blame where it properly belongs.”
At the end of the day, the presenters did a final wrap and asked if there were any questions. The team was stunned to hear one final question from a Yazidi woman: “Isn’t that what we heard about yesterday (in a nearby worship time the women had all felt drawn to sit in on)—that Jesus took on all our shame?”
“Despite the cumulative and extreme traumas these young women endured…and how careful we had to be in mentioning anything related to Christianity, the amount of hope and healing we saw in one week was nothing short of miraculous,” Alex shared.
One of the women expressed it this way: “I had completely lost hope—I now realize there is hope and I can go on in life.” “I never thought so much healing could happen in such a short time,” said another. “I was able to empty myself of so many problems I was holding [onto] inside. I feel so light and free.”
It’s been a few years since that intensive healing week, and all 13 women now know and love Jesus (a relational journey that took many months). Interactions with some of these women reveal that their shame truly has been taken away by Jesus. They have been made new!
NEO Leaders runs a community center in the refugee camp where these women live, offering trauma healing groups for more women, and also teaching hundreds of children. Some of the original 13 women who went through the trauma healing process now serve as teachers at the school! Hundreds of Yazidi women have found help and hope through these trauma healing sessions, and many of them have found faith.
The love of Christ has been made real to these women in substantial ways through these efforts. NEO Leaders is actually the only NGO allowed to serve inside the Yazidi camps. Where other non-profits promised to help but never delivered, NEO Leaders has stayed long-term and continues to offer help and hope. People in the camps want the NEO Leaders staff and volunteers to keep coming because they can tell there is something different about them. The help they’ve offered is real and relentless. Just like the Jesus they serve.
ABOUT THIS STORY
Alex Galloway is a Psy.D. Clinical Psychologist with a specialized interest in trauma recovery, sexuality, and the holistic care of God’s people. He is a team leader at Novo’s missionary care center in Malaga, Spain, SentWell, and enjoys encouraging, equipping, and empowering those who minister on the “front lines.” Alex loves to see God awaken people to his unexpected grace, and to see the healing power of the gospel play out in their lives. He’s married to Amy and they have three grown daughters.
Headquartered out of Beirut, Lebanon, NEO Leaders was founded in 2005. NEO Leaders is led by Nadim Costa, who was born in Beirut and educated at the American University of Beirut. He pursued a career in Business, but eventually moved to ministry, serving as the Executive Director of SAT-7 in Lebanon. Presently NEO Leaders has teams in Lebanon, Syria, Iran, Macedonia, Serbia, Yemen, Jordan, Iraq, Egypt, Turkey, Greece, Kuwait, KSA, and Sudan.
NEO Leaders has 200 national staff and 7,8000 volunteers serving 50,957 DBS groups consisting of over 750,000 in 28 countries. Specific demographics directly benefiting from NEO Leaders efforts include refugees from the war in Syria and Iraq, persons with disabilities, youth, abused women, Bedouins, and people across a broad ethnic, socio-economic, and sectarian spectrum.