Joshua Boyle and Caitlan Coleman

[Flossie]

Caitlan Coleman Boyle and Joshua Boyle gave an inteview last night on Nightline.
 

Spoiler

 

The American mom held hostage by the Taliban for five years says she was beaten and raped as she tried to protect her children from their captors. 

Caitlan Coleman Boyle, 31, from Stewartstown, Pennsylvania — who was abducted while traveling in Afghanistan with her husband, Joshua Boyle, 34, of Perth-Andover, Canada, and had three children in captivity — described the brutal treatment her family endured in captivity, in an exclusive broadcast interview with ABC News. 

She said some of their guards “hated children” and targeted their eldest son for beatings, sometimes with a stick, claiming the young boy was “making problems” or being “too loud.” When Coleman Boyle tried to intervene, she was beaten as well. “I would get beaten or hit or thrown on the ground,” Coleman Boyle said. 

According to her husband, Coleman Boyle sustained serious injuries while fighting to keep their captors from her children. 

“She had a broken cheekbone,” Boyle said. “She actually broke her own hand punching one of them. She broke her fingers, so she was very proud of that injury.” 

She accused her captors of even more grievous crimes, saying the guards murdered their unborn daughter in a “forced abortion,” and she was later raped by two men in retribution for trying to report the crime to their superiors. 

“They just kept saying that this will happen again if we don’t stop speaking about the forced abortion, that this happened because we were trying to tell people what they had done and that it would happen again,” Coleman Boyle said. 

The two told ABC News they are speaking out so soon after their release because they want justice for their abusers, hoping Taliban leaders will be put on trial for war crimes or otherwise be held accountable in the tribal justice system. 

“Our focus is on trying to hold accountable those who have committed grave human rights violations against us and against others,” Boyle said. “I lost a daughter. That was more of a crushing blow to me than the years. What they did was a crime against humanity by international law.” 

The couple was abducted while traveling in eastern Afghanistan’s war-torn Ghazni province in 2012, taken prisoner by the Haqqani network, an extremist element of the Afghan Taliban, and quickly transported to Pakistan. Coleman Boyle, who was pregnant at the time of their capture, gave birth to three children while in captivity. 

The family was frequently moved to different locations through Pakistan’s tribal belt. According to Boyle, who says he was shackled for the duration of his captivity, the family was usually held in a single room, often underground, sometimes on a concrete floor, sometimes on a dirt floor. The parents used discarded items as makeshift toys for their children. 

“We would just teach them to use things like bottle caps or bits of cardboard, garbage essentially, but what we could find to play with,” Coleman Boyle said. 

He said they taught their eldest son the alphabet, geography and constellations and tried their best to make the horrible tolerable. They used British history — the tale of the execution of Charles I in 1649 — to make up a game about beheadings, to ease their eldest son’s fear, should their captors do the same to his parents. 

“He certainly knew that this type of thing could happen to his family, so he had great fun pretending to be Oliver Cromwell chasing Charles I around and trying to behead him,” she said. “So we made it a game so that he wasn’t afraid, because there was, you know, there was nothing we could do if it came to that except try to make him less afraid.” 

Danger, however, was never far from their minds. Coleman Boyle said they told their son “some” of what was happening to them but tried to keep “the worst bits” from him. 

“But he had to know that these people were bad that he was interacting with, outside of his family,” she said. “That everyone else he saw, you couldn’t trust.” 

The physical abuse of the family escalated, Boyle said, when the Haqqani network demanded he join the extremist group as a Western propagandist. 

“They had come four different times, to offer employment in the group ... and I made it very clear that I’d rather be the hostage than be on your side of the cage.” Boyle said. “I’d rather be inside than outside.” 

His refusal had serious consequences. 

“There were beatings. There was violence. Then they’d come to make the offer again. Still said no. More beatings, more violence. Maybe that’ll be the solution. Still no,” Boyle said. “And after the final time — that’s when they killed our daughter. And after that, there were no more intimations of recruitment.” 

Coleman Boyle, who was taken hostage when she was more than six months pregnant with her first son, had to hide the pregnancies of her two other children born in captivity. Her husband helped her deliver them, she said, with no doctor present. 

“They didn’t want us to have any more,” she said. 

She believes the guards put something in her food in 2014 to force a miscarriage of their unborn daughter, who the couple named Martyr Boyle. The couple complained to their captors and tried to slip notes to Taliban visitors informing them of the crime, so, the two said, their guards raped her while their eldest son was in the room to compel her to stay silent. 

“One day they came into the cell, and they took my husband out forcefully, dragging him out, and one of the guards threw me down on the ground, hitting me and shouting, ‘I will kill you,’” Coleman Boyle said. “That’s when the assault happened. It was with two men. And then there was a third at the door. And afterwards, the animals wouldn’t even give me back my clothes.” 

The day after she was raped, Coleman Boyle said, Pakistani gunships strafed Haqqani positions in North Waziristan. 

“There were two helicopters with Gatling guns firing constantly,” she said. “There was a lot of AK-47 fire, and there were even some larger explosions.” 

Shrapnel struck the buildings where Coleman Boyle and Boyle were held separately. 

“It was a big, big battle. And our guards were hiding out of sight. They were absolutely terrified,” she said. “But my husband and I were each laughing to ourselves ... thinking, ‘I hope that these sons of bitches die today.’” 

The family was freed in mid-October in what was described by the Pakistani army as an operation carried out by Pakistani troops, but details about that operation remain unclear. 

Now living in Canada and trying to adjust to freedom, with the help of supporters such as HostageUS, Coleman Boyle and Boyle say the scars from years of abuse in captivity are only beginning to heal. They weren’t ready to answer lingering questions about his past and the circumstances leading to their capture and release. 

Boyle was previously married to a fellow Canadian, Zaynab Khadr, who had family ties to al-Qaeda. Her father was a suspected al-Qaeda financer killed by Pakistani security forces, and her younger brother Omar Khadr was once the youngest detainee at the U.S. terrorist prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. He has since been released. 

When the family arrived in Toronto a month ago, Boyle told reporters at a press conference that he and Coleman Boyle were captured while trying to help poor Afghans. 

“I was in Afghanistan helping the most neglected minority group in the world, those ordinary villagers who lived deep inside Taliban-controlled Afghanistan, where no NGO, no aid worker and no government has ever successfully been able bring the necessary help,” he said. 

Boyle refused to discuss with ABC News why he was in Afghanistan, however, saying he has already answered those questions from the news media. 

Coleman Boyle confirmed that she and her husband “made the decision” to have more children, but she and Boyle declined to explain that decision further. 

“I think it’s a sad statement on the state of affairs of the world when a family is asked to justify their decision to have children in any circumstance,” he said. 

And the circumstances of the family’s release remain in dispute. The U.S. government had planned a commando raid to secure the family, but officials were surprised when the family suddenly appeared in the custody of the Pakistani military. Boyle maintained that the family was rescued in a firefight. 

“The only thing being exchanged was bullets,” he said. 

In the meantime, the two are focused on the future and on their family. Coleman Boyle says it was the children who kept her going while she was in captivity, so after years of trauma, she hopes it’s time for them to heal. 

“I hope that they find enough happiness and joy to make up for it,” Coleman Boyle said. 

http://abcnews.go.com/International/american-hostage-mom-describes-brutal-treatment-taliban-captors/story?id=51267549

 

I started to watch the Nightline interview but eventually turned it off.  One can't expect perfectly rational behavior from people after being held hostage for five years, but I still felt there was something 'off' about the parents.  

Maybe it was because they seemed to be too happy to be on camera, and they were both the victims and the heroes of their story.  I felt like they were about to announce they're writing a book and are trying to drum up interest from a publisher.  But what is the 'proper' way to discuss a years long hostage situation?  

Am I too jaded by seeing people who can't wait to jump in front of a camera and gleefully tell about the horrible event they just witnessed?  Those people are usually just bystanders or on the periphery.  For the people who found themselves in the thick of traumatic events, I'm used to them not wanting to talk about it or doing so reluctantly and barely able to hold themselves together at times.

Another layer of unreality was the oldest son playing happily and bouncing around during parts of the interview.  I know kids can be amazingly resilient, but a child born into captivity, denied medical care and often going hungry, routinely beaten for being too loud, watching his parents being beaten for trying to protect him, seeing his mother being raped...  Well, I'd expect to see a child who was more quiet and alert for signs that things are about to take a dark turn.  

I just feel like the truth is still out there, and it's not the story told by Coleman and Boyle.

[laPapessaGiovanna]

Quote

The day after she was raped, Coleman Boyle said, Pakistani gunships strafed Haqqani positions in North Waziristan. 

“There were two helicopters with Gatling guns firing constantly,” she said. “There was a lot of AK-47 fire, and there were even some larger explosions.” 

Shrapnel struck the buildings where Coleman Boyle and Boyle were held separately. 

“It was a big, big battle. And our guards were hiding out of sight. They were absolutely terrified,” she said. “But my husband and I were each laughing to ourselves ... thinking, ‘I hope that these sons of bitches die today.’” 

This sounds so fictional to me. I mean you are in the middle of a battle with your infant son, shrapnel and bullets everywhere and you laugh and aren't worried even a bit? It's not like shrapnel can distinguish between captors and hostages. At the very least these two aren't in their right minds.

[faraway]

On 21.11.2017 at 5:03 PM, Flossie said:

Another layer of unreality was the oldest son playing happily and bouncing around during parts of the interview.  I know kids can be amazingly resilient, but a child born into captivity, denied medical care and often going hungry, routinely beaten for being too loud, watching his parents being beaten for trying to protect him, seeing his mother being raped...  Well, I'd expect to see a child who was more quiet and alert for signs that things are about to take a dark turn.  

I just feel like the truth is still out there, and it's not the story told by Coleman and Boyle.

Isn't the normal procedure after children are rescued from some kind of bad situation with media interest to shield them, protect their privacy and gently introduce them to normal life? Not have them jump through TV interviews? I have a weird feeling that these kids might be denied normal life altogether with these two as parents.

[Bethella]

Joshua Boyle has been arrested and is facing at least a dozen charges including sexual assault, assault and forcible confinement. The statement from Caitlan makes it sound like this has happened since the rescue. 

Quote

In a statement to the Toronto Star, Boyle's wife wrote, "I can't speak about the specific charges, but I can say that ultimately it is the strain and trauma he was forced to endure for so many years and the effects that that had on his mental state that is most culpable for this."

"Obviously, he is responsible for his own actions," she added, "but it is with compassion and forgiveness that I say I hope help and healing can be found for him. As to the rest of us, myself and the children, we are healthy and holding up as well as well we can."

[Elegant Mess]

24 minutes ago, Bethella said:

Joshua Boyle has been arrested and is facing at least a dozen charges including sexual assault, assault and forcible confinement.

Whoa!  I just read the news on CNN.  This is every shade of messed up!  

[Hashtag Blessed]

54 minutes ago, Bethella said:

Joshua Boyle has been arrested and is facing at least a dozen charges including sexual assault, assault and forcible confinement. The statement from Caitlan makes it sound like this has happened since the rescue. 

Just saw this on twitter. I knew there was something off about this whole story. Idk what it is but it all stinks if bullshit. And now this! There is something very wrong with both of them. I’m interested in seeing how this unfolds. 

[WhatWouldJohnCrichtonDo?]

Well, my position before was "give them/him enough rope..."  I guess he's hung himself.

[acheronbeach]

8 hours ago, Bethella said:

Joshua Boyle has been arrested and is facing at least a dozen charges including sexual assault, assault and forcible confinement. The statement from Caitlan makes it sound like this has happened since the rescue. 

Realistically, the way the Ontario courts work, it would have to be post-rescue.

Not to go too deep into the Criminal Code of Canada, but other than a few exceptions that don't apply to Boyle, out of country crimes aren't prosecuted in provincial courts.

 

Also... just read the charges.  FYI, "misleading police" is not a crime in Canada.  I assume he's actually been charged with Obstruct Peace Officer, which could cover all sorts of behaviour,  not just lying to a cop.

Edited January 3, 2018 by acheronbeach

[Carm_88]

Can't say I'm too shocked. The story reeked of lies. And Joshua Boyle definitely isn't completely hinged! 

[Bethella]

6 hours ago, acheronbeach said:

Not to go too deep into the Criminal Code of Canada, but other than a few exceptions that don't apply to Boyle, out of country crimes aren't prosecuted in provincial courts.

No, but it could have been something that predated their capture. (i.e. possibly someone coming forward after all the publicity about their release)

[Howl]

Never mind! Y'all already covered this, but the alleged time frame is from the day they arrived back in Canada until the end of December. 

Edited January 4, 2018 by Howl

[acheronbeach]

7 hours ago, Bethella said:

No, but it could have been something that predated their capture. (i.e. possibly someone coming forward after all the publicity about their release)

Practically, other than child sex assaults and deaths, how often does the crown elect by indictment on hybrid offences so it can prosecute historical ones that would be this old?  It's possible, I just think it's pretty unlikely.   In seven years, I haven't.   

The nature of the charges makes it sound like family violence, then lying to the cops or resisting arrest once he was investigated.

Edited January 4, 2018 by acheronbeach

[Bethella]

42 minutes ago, acheronbeach said:

Practically, other than child sex assaults and deaths, how often does the crown elect by indictment on hybrid offences so it can prosecute historical ones that would be this old?  It's possible, I just think it's pretty unlikely.   In seven years, I haven't.   

The nature of the charges makes it sound like family violence, then lying to the cops or resisting arrest once he was investigated.

Maybe it's different in Canada, but charges for historical offences isn't that uncommon here in the States. Usually it's things like murders and rapes but he is charged with sexual assault.

Having heard more now about the charges than was available in the initial article it does sound like family violence.

[Jigsaw3]

CBC News says: "One count of public mischief (misleading a police officer into believing that someone was suicidal and missing, causing the officer to start an investigation, and thereby diverting suspicion away from Boyle)."

So yes, misleading cops. Also he is charged with one count of administering a noxious substance (an anti-depressant.) And it is all related to between his return and now, and there are two victims (who can't be identified.)  Super sketchy. At least none of the charges relate to minors, so hopefully his children aren't involved?

Trudeau's in a bit of trouble: he did a meet and greet with the family back in December and posted a picture on his instagram. Not super clever of him, in retrospect.

[jegfile]

Generally speaking, Canadian sentences for these crimes would be much less than the same conviction in the US. I guess that's why Joshua Boyle wanted to come to Canada so badly. I wonder if Caitlan will return to the US to be with her family.

[tropaka]

These charges deal with alleged crimes committed since the rescue and a UK newspaper reported that they were against two un-named women.

Quote

Mr Boyle was arrested on New Year’s Day, accused of crimes committed between October 14 and December 30. The victims were two unnamed women.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2018/01/03/former-taliban-hostage-arrested-canada-15-charges-including/?WT.mc_id=tmg_share_tw

[Jigsaw3]

Weeeellll.....

The Canadian police have withdrawn the initial 15 charges and replaced them with a new set of 19 charges against Boyle. Many of them are the same, but they've added uttering a death threat and sexual assault with weapons (broomstick and rope, 1 charge each). So I'm guessing the new charges are more precise? Also, there is only one (unidentified) victim. And he's scheduled for a psychiatric assessment.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/ottawa/joshua-boyle-ottawa-charges-court-1.4504010

Edited January 29, 2018 by laPapessaGiovanna
Removing speculation on victim's identity

[laPapessaGiovanna]

A reminder

We do NOT speculate on sexual assault/rape/molestation victim's identity regardless of age, sex or marital status.

 

[Botkinetti]

 https://www.thestar.com/news/canada/2018/07/25/former-hostage-caitlan-coleman-wife-of-joshua-boyle-returns-to-us-with-children-report.html

Update on this family.

[Markie]

Apparently Caitlan is due to have their fourth child this month. 

[Jigsaw3]

Caitlan has received permission from a Canadian judge to take the kids to live with her parents in Penn. She is alleging abuse from Joshua; Joshua also alleges that she is abusive.  The situation sounds like a mess all around: https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/ottawa/caitlan-coleman-joshua-boyle-custody-battle-1.4811965 .

I feel really sorry for all the children, including the upcoming baby. I hope they're able to find some stability in Pennsylvania.

[Carm_88]

21 minutes ago, Jigsaw3 said:

 

I feel really sorry for all the children, including the upcoming baby. I hope they're able to find some stability in Pennsylvania.

If both are abusive, I hope that someone in Caitlin's family in Pennsylvania will step forward and take the kids. The kids are the innocent ones here. The parents seem to be all kinds of messed up.

[Maggie Mae]

2 hours ago, Carm_88 said:

If both are abusive, I hope that someone in Caitlin's family in Pennsylvania will step forward and take the kids. The kids are the innocent ones here. The parents seem to be all kinds of messed up.

If the kids are being raised as Muslims, they would be safer and happier in Canada. Actually, most Americans would be better off in Canada if they have the opportunity. I can't fathom why anyone who isn't super rich would want to raise kids in the US if they had another option. 

[JermajestyDuggar]

Sorry I don’t believe the guy and obviously the judge doesn’t either. If Her family is a good support system and far away from their abusive dad, then they probably are better off in PA. 

[Carm_88]

36 minutes ago, Maggie Mae said:

If the kids are being raised as Muslims, they would be safer and happier in Canada.

Maybe, but with Doug Ford ruling as premier; I'm not real sure about Ontario being great at the moment. Not as bad as the US, but he's certainly being an idiot.