The first time Aminata Conteh-Biger was raped by her kidnappers, she was told that it was her fault for being too beautiful. Regaining consciousness and in severe pain, the then 18-year-old began to fear her own looks.
"I carried so much shame for being raped, I was told I was too beautiful. I was taught by my father that beauty is on the inside, I didn't know what [my captors] meant, I was confused," the Sierra Leonean from Beverly Hills, NSW, tells Daily Life.
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Fantastic Beasts: A Magical History
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A celebration of the remarkable spirits of four African women survivors of sexual abuse, and the triumph of their improbable theatre troupe.
"It was out of my control and it's hard when someone sees something that you don't translate in that way. I didn't understand what beauty was, I was extremely scared of it for a long long time."
When rebel militia stormed her village and ransacked her family home in Sierra Leone in 1999, Conteh-Biger had immediately been segregated from her family and community. The heavily armed fighters were known to murder parents of teenage girls to make abduction easier, and, seeing one rebel make a beeline for her, Conteh-Biger dropped her father's hand to protect him. It was the last time she ever saw him.
Her kidnappers had also taken her virginity, an act they would cement many, many times over the seven months she was held captive and used as a human shield during the civil war. In gunfights between militia and government forces, the teen was forced, more than once, to protect herself by crawling under dead bodies.
The now 36-year-old's life is one of four at the heart of new film, The Baulkham Hills African Ladies Troupe, about the journey of a group of Sydney-based refugees whose stories were turned from quietly suppressed memories into an internationally touring theatre production, featuring the women themselves.
From meeting playwright and producer Ros Horin through the Survivors of Torture and Trauma Assistance and Rehabilitation Service to emotional initial talks about a theatre project, the women emerge triumphant on the London stage and go on to a season finale at the Sydney Opera House. The film charts their journey, confronting old wounds and raw trauma along the way.
"I normally stop after saying I was kidnapped," says Conteh-Biger as she recounts her trauma, escape and eventual securing of a safe haven in Australia. "But after telling my story as a UNHCR ambassador, people reacted. People are suffering still from the war and I saw that through my story, I can tell their story."
Living in Australia, she says she can expose what happened to her country - and educate her new homeland "about what refugees really are". Part of that education is the documentary, out on general release on Thursday and a thrilling success story that she says none of the cast ever expected. But she, too, has learnt much from the play and its "making of" film rendition.
"It has been rewarding. I feel like my body was in chains, once I started telling my story and being free from that prison, I knew how much of myself I was able to be.
"When you are raped you feel like it's your fault, no matter where you are, you have this big shame you carry around. I have let go of that completely, I do not have any hatred.
"I would not give [my captors] the satisfaction to control my body, I would not let them break me or take things that cannot be taken back."
Now "so free and so in love", married to a Frenchman and with two children, Conteh-Biger works in retail and founded and runs a female sexual health charity targeting Sierra Leone's woeful infant mortality rate. The Aminata Maternal Health Foundation was inspired by her own difficult labour for her four-year-old daughter, Serafina.
Throughout her work and family life, she carries her father's lesson closer than ever: beauty is on the inside.
"When people in Australia say I am beautiful I think of [my main captor's] obsession with me. It was quite a challenge at first," she recalls.
"I'm extremely comfortable with who I am now. It doesn't frighten me anymore."