Last week, Zainab Bangura, a UN official who traveled to five countries and interviewed dozens of women and girls who survived Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) captivity, gave horrowing reports of sexual violence against women and girls, as young as nine. The worst was on “one who had been temporarily married over 20 times, after each occasion forced to undergo surgery to repair her virginity.” She said,

“Girls are literally being stripped naked and examined in slave bazaars… categorized and shipped naked off to Raqqa or Mosul or other locations to be distributed among ISIL leadership and fighters.”

An hour ago, I read a deeply moving blogpost from full-time wife and mother-of-six Ann Voskamp. She wrote,

“Nine-year-old Yezidi and Christian girls can show up in headlines: Impregnated. Held, taken, violated and discarded. Sides round and swollen. Sent back to shame their communities. Pregnant little girls with dolls still in their hands.”

I don’t know what else to say or do, except to pray, write this post and ask you to pray, too.

“How can one plumb the depth of this evil? It tears at every corner of the heart. You can’t plumb this depth …just like so much relentless evil in this world… but we can pray! We can stand and cry out for God’s truth and justice to prevail! And we can administer the greatest balm for this unbearable pain—Christ’s love!” – Ian Wildeboer, a missionary in Papua New Guinea