{UAH} Canadian Woman Sexually Brutalized, Forced to Accept Islam

Canadian Woman Opens Up About 460-Day Ordeal With Somali Captors: Forced to Convert to Islam, 'Starved, Beaten and Sexually Brutalized'

Aug. 19, 2013 11:20am Sharona Schwartz

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SHARES

Amanda Lindhout traveled to Somalia hoping to find a story that would launch her career as a television reporter. Four days after arriving in the country with a photographer friend, both weretaken hostage by Islamist insurgents. While in captivity, she was "starved, beaten and sexually brutalized" according to her memoir of the 2008 saga set to be released next month.

According to the description of her book, A House in the Sky, Lindhout spent fifteen months "of harrowing captivity" after being pulled from the car in which she was traveling by a group of masked men.

Amanda Lindhout and Nigel Brennan in Mogadishu after being released from captivity (Somalian Presidential Office/AFP/Getty Images)

During her 460-day ordeal, the aspiring reporter converted to Islam in order not to be killed, received "wife lessons" from one of her captors, and made a daring escape attempt with her fellow hostage.

Canadian Press reports that Lindhout was trussed up like an animal, tied for days with her hands and feet pulled together tightly behind her back.

In the book, Lindhout who is now 32-years-old concedes she was naive to have traveled to such a dangerous country for the thrill. In an interview last year, she said "it was not a wise decision to make" and agrees with criticism she has faced for having traveled there.

Prior to that, she had worked as a cocktail waitress in Calgary, saving her tips for backpacking trips, then later picking up freelance reporting work in other dicey locations, including Afghanistan and Iraq, where she was hired by Iran's English language Press TV before realizing she was "part of a propaganda machine."

Then it was off to Somalia with an ex-boyfriend with whom she had worked in the past, Australian photographer Nigel Brennan. "The reasons to do it seemed straightforward. Somalia was a mess. There were stories there — a raging war, an impending famine, religious extremists and a culture that had been largely shut out of sight," she writes

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Gwokto La'Kitgum

"Even a small dog can piss on a tall Building", Jim Hightower

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