Kayla Mueller Refused to Flee ISIS Captivity to Protect Others

A young Yazidi sex slave told The Independent that American hostage Kayla Mueller refused to escape the Islamic State (ISIS/ISIL) to save the Yazidis held with her.

On Friday, ABC News revealed that ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi kept Mueller as his personal sex slave. He forced her to live with Abu Sayyaf, who was in charge of the terrorist group’s oil and gas revenue. The prisoners said Umm Sayyaf, wife of Sayyaf, organized the sex slave market in the area.

“Kayla did not marry this man,” declared her mother, Marsha Mueller. “He took her to his room and he abused her and she came back crying.”

The 14-year-old Yazidi said Mueller disappeared whenever al-Baghdadi visited the house. But when Mueller came back to her room she was “distressed and crying.” She confirmed that ISIS forced her to marry the vicious leader.

“I saw him often, he came there often,” she described. “And every time he came, he took Kayla away. She would always come back after.”

Mueller risked her life to protect the Yazidis. The teenager escaped with her sister in October, but Mueller decided to stay behind because she thought “her foreign appearance would put them in danger while on the run.”

“Kayla tried to protect these young girls,” explained Mrs. Mueller. “She was like a mother figure to them.”

U.S. forces in Syria arrested Umm Sayyaf in May. She allegedly is cooperating, and the White House did state she would “be prosecuted in Kurdish Iraq and would be ‘held accountable for her crimes.’”

ISIS captured Kayla Mueller in August 2013. The jihadists claimed an airstrike by Jordan killed her, but have only published a photo of rubble in Syria as proof of her death. A few days later, however, her parents in Arizona confirmed her death. The terrorists sent them pictures to prove she was deceased. Officials told ABC News that no one truly knows how Mueller died.

In February, The Daily Beast reported that President Obama waited almost a month after British intelligence told him the location of American hostages to launch a rescue mission. President Obama received the reports in June 2014, but by the time he acted on July 4, ISIS had already moved the hostages, which included Mueller, James Foley, and Steven Sotloff, to another location. ISIS executed Foley and Sotloff in August and September, respectively.