RAPED VICTIMS UNDERGOES VIRGINITY TEST

As if being the sex slave of an Islamic State fighter isn’t horrific enough, countless women and girls were then subjected to further humiliation — barbaric and appalling virginity tests.

Escapees and survivors of the ISIS kidnapping reveal the horrors that they endured at the hands of Islamic State militants has they were forced to undergo the virginity tests conducted by Kurdistan officials, according to Human Rights Watch.

“The girls underwent the abusive and inaccurate procedure as part of a forensic, post-rape examination” HRW Researcher, Women’s Rights Division Rothna Begum said in a recent Dispatches report.

She said the tests were seen as evidence of rape by Iraqi courts, despite the World Health Organisation stating definitively that “virginity tests” have no scientific validity.

Stating that “the tests are based on a commonly held but inaccurate belief that all women and girls who are virgins have intact hymens that bleed on first intercourse, as such they are ineffective for determining whether a woman or girl has been raped.”

Ms Begum, who interviewed dozens of girls who were captured by ISIS fighters when they swept through northern Iraq in August 2014, said the girls were in dire need of health care, counselling and other services to help them begin to recover from their ordeal.

While their stories were taken seriously, some of the girls were subjected to the horrific tests, she added, further adding to their trauma.

The committee gathering evidence of ISIS crimes this week revealed it had stopped referring sex slave survivors for virginity tests. Instead they were adopting a new medical examination report on sexual violence based on UN recommendations, consistent with human rights and best practice, HRW reveal.
click here to read confessions from victims.