Caitlan Coleman, an American who spent five years as a hostage to the Taliban, is finally speaking out about the abuse she suffered at the hands of her Canadian husband Joshua Boyle, and her fight to gain custody of their children.
“I think that Josh took a lot of the best years of my life from me,” she said. “I feel like I’ve been given another chance. A lot of my life was spent under Josh’s thumb.”
She has managed to take her children back to the United States with her, while her husband, Canadian Joshua Boyle, is facing 19 charges including sexual assault, domestic violence, and forcible confinement.
Despite alleged sympathies to radical Islam, Boyle met with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau on Parliament Hill in 2017, three months after he returned to Canada.
Less than two weeks after Boyle and his family met with Trudeau, Boyle was arrested and charged.
Coleman claims to have suffered from horrendous abuse at the hands of Joshua Boyle both before and after their imprisonment by a Taliban associate group.
Boyle allegedly controlled all aspects of Coleman’s life.
“Josh scripted any interaction I was to have with media. He also scripted my interactions with his family or with my family, with doctors, with anyone,” she said.
Boyle, who is also the ex-husband of Omar Khadr’s sister, allowed himself and Coleman to be taken hostage after he took the pair to Afghanistan in 2012.
The two had been backpacking through Central Asia, but Boyle didn’t tell Coleman that he was taking her to Afghanistan.
“He wanted to go and get the real story on the Taliban. He thought they were misrepresented in the Western media,” she said.
Others have alleged that Boyle’s interest in radical Islam may have been the motivator for his trip to Afghanistan.
