‘The saddest thing I remember was this little girl, 12 years old. They raped her without mercy’: Dressed in traditional wedding gowns, Yazidi sex slaves relive their torture by ISIS

‘The saddest thing I remember was this little girl, 12 years old. They raped her without mercy’: Dressed in traditional wedding gowns, Yazidi sex slaves relive their torture by ISIS

More than 5,000 Yazidi women were captured and enslaved by ISIS forces when the militant Islamist terrorists attacked the city of Sinjar, northern Iraq in August 2014.

The women, some just teenagers, were forced to watch ISIS militants murder their families before they were sold into sexual slavery.

While many remain in the evil clutches of ISIS, some have managed to escape to relay horrific tales of abuse, rape, slavery and brutal torture.

In some cases, the young women returned home carrying the unborn children of their captors. 

Seivan Salim, an Iraqi female photographer, tracked down some of the women who managed to escape.

She has portrayed them wearing the traditional white Yazidi wedding dress – a symbol for purity. 

Each woman tells her story in her own words.