Rukmini Callimachi, a two-time OPC award winner and board member, has written chilling accounts of rape and slavery of women captured by the Islamic State, also known as ISIS, and explores how the organization uses sexual assault to recruit fighters and shame its enemies.
In the New York Times piece, “ISIS Enshrines a Theology of Rape,” she follows the stories of captured women, many of them from Iraq’s Yazidi minority, who are separated from male prisoners, rounded up and sold into sexual slavery.
She also explores the way these acts are justified and cloaked in religious terms. The story has garnered more than two million clicks online.
As a follow up, she wrote about a U.S. aid worker who was held as a sex slave before she was killed in an airstrike.
Callimachi won both the Hal Boyle and Bob Considine awards for her reporting on a trove of al-Qaida documents uncovered in Mali last year. Her piece grabbed the attention of PBS Newshour, which interviewed Callimachi about her reporting.
Read “ISIS Enshrines a Theology of Rape” >>
Read a Q&A about her story on The New York Times >>
Watch Callimachi’s interview on PBS Newshour >>
Read about a U.S. aid worker who was sold into sexual slavery >>