The family was rescued by the Pakistan Army on October 12, 2017. Photo: File 

 

NEW YORK: A US mother held hostage by militants for five years has detailed the violence and sexual assault she endured in captivity, and said her young son was also beaten.

"This was an intolerable situation for a child to be in," Caitlan Coleman Boyle, 31, told ABC News in a television interview broadcast Monday.

Boyle gave birth to three children in captivity. She and her Canadian husband were abducted by militants while travelling through a remote area of Afghanistan ? for reasons that remain unclear ? in 2012.

Army describes freeing US-Canadian couple from Taliban

Pakistan was told by US intelligence at 4pm on Wednesday that the hostages were on the move

The family were released last month in Pakistan in circumstances that are also unclear, and are now trying to rebuild their lives in Canada.

Pakistan´s military has said it rescued the family while some US and Canadian officials have reportedly described their release as a "negotiated handover."

Boyle said their guards "could be very violent, even sometimes with the children," assaulting their now four-year-old son with a stick, and hitting her and her husband.

Freed American hostage Caitlan Coleman rushed to hospital

?My wife has been through hell, and she has to be my first priority right now,? her husband Boyle said

"I would get beaten or hit or thrown on the ground," she told ABC News. She broke a cheekbone and three fingers while intervening to protect the children, her husband, Joshua Boyle, 34, told ABC.

They made toys out of bottle caps and bits of cardboard, and fearing the family could be beheaded, they made up a game based on England´s Charles I, who was executed in 1649, and Oliver Cromwell, she said.

"Obviously with people like this, the idea of a beheading is always on the table, so he certainly knew that this type of thing could happen to his family but then we would come up with games to make it not seem so scary," she said.

"He had great fun pretending to be Oliver Cromwell and chasing Charles I around and trying to behead him," she said. "We made it a game so that he wasn´t afraid."

After the family returned to Canada last month, Boyle, 34, accused his kidnappers of murdering an infant daughter through a "forced abortion" and of raping his wife.

Boyle says child killed, US wife raped during five-year captivity

The rescued family arrived in Canada after five years in Taliban captivity

"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, I will kill you´" his wife told ABC News.

"And 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 Pakistan Army announced on October 12 that the family had been "recovered... from terrorist custody through an intelligence-based operation by Pakistani troops."

US intelligence services had been tracking the movement of the hostages and informed their Pakistani partners when they were moved across the Pak-Afghan border into Kurram Agency on October 11, 2017.