London: This is the face of an asylum seeker who has been kidnapped, raped and had her baby stolen from her.
Nihad Barakat al-Awsi has applied for Australia's protection, along with her sister, three of her brothers, her nephew, mother and sister-in-law's family who all survived Islamic State's attempted genocide of her people - the Yazidis of northern Iraq.
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Three years ago, when she was 15, Nihad had many friends, enjoyed school - especially maths and English - and dreamed of becoming a teacher.
But the bright young Yazidi woman's life irrevocably changed one afternoon when a villager from a nearby town sounded the alarm: "IS are coming".
![Nihad Barakat Shamo Al-Awsi pictured in London.](/web/20170516055445im_/http://www.canberratimes.com.au/content/dam/images/g/v/y/k/e/j/image.related.articleLeadwide.620x349.gw3ijm.png/1494721795560.jpg)
Nihad and her family, she is one of 18 children, had two choices: convert to Islam or flee. Islamic State, also known as ISIL or ISIS, considers the Yazidis - whose beliefs draw from Christianity, Islam and the ancient Zoroastrian faith of Persia - to be "devil-worshippers."
The family packed into cars and headed for Mount Sinjar but were captured at a checkpoint.
Nihad has sought protection here, because unlike other programs for Yazidi women around the world, including in Germany, Australia is willing to keep her family together.
![Nihad Barakat Shamo Al-Awsi is seeking a new life in Australia.](/web/20170516055445im_/http://www.canberratimes.com.au/content/dam/images/g/v/y/k/e/u/image.related.articleLeadNarrow.300x0.gw3ijm.png/1494721795560.jpg)
In 2017-18, Australia will accept 18,750 people fleeing persecution. In March, the government announced it had granted protection visas to 12,000 people displaced by the conflict in in Syria and Iraq. Refugees who have suffered torture and trauma are offered specialist counselling services when they arrive in Australia. Nihad and her family may need them.
Nihad was one of the 6800 Yazidis now believed to have been captured to become sex slaves or fighters.
She cannot erase the mental trauma from her time under the control of the IS "monsters".
"Several times I tried to tell my family about my sister who was being raped in front of me and she was screaming at that time, begging for my mother to come to help her.
"I can't tell anyone about this."
After her capture, Nihad was taken to a village on the Iraq-Syria border, where the male captives were separated from the girls and women.
She was then transferred to Mosul, where a fighter claimed her, and raped her repeatedly before his death in the battlefield nearly two months later. She was quickly "purchased" and forced to marry another "monster", a man known as Abu Faris who already had a wife and a Yazidi girl as his slave.
Many IS slaves have died in captivity but Nihad says she clung to the hope of reuniting with her family. "I used to go to see my sisters and my brother [all in captivity] and I said, 'Please stick to the hope that one day we will be released and we will be returned to our lives'."
Her strength prevailed through the constant rapes and beatings but then she fell pregnant. "I thought I was carrying a small IS man," she says.
"When I got pregnant I thought that I am weak and I am wondering and asking myself, 'Why did this happen?'"
"I disassociated from the surroundings. I felt 'I am lost' but one day I managed to get a phone to call my family and from that moment I clung to the hope again."
Nihad tried to force a miscarriage, but her son did arrive and when he did she named him Issa – Arabic for Jesus. He will turn two in July, though it is now unlikely she will ever see him again. When she escaped she had to leave Issa, then just three months old, with the father, Abu Faris. He remains in northern Iraq and has insisted on keeping the boy.
Even if Nihad had been able to take Issa with her, her people would have rejected her son, she says.
"He is part of me but he's something from those criminals and he represents those criminals. Even if I managed to meet him again, my family and all the Yazidi people would say 'This is a member of ISIS'," Nihad tells Fairfax Media at the headquarters of the London-based charity the AMAR Foundation, which is supporting her rehabilitation.
"I used to carry him and I used to hug him and play with him but I have never forgot my family and I was thinking all the time about returning to my family."
New research from the London School of Economics has found 9900 Yazidis were killed or kidnapped over the course of just a few days in August 2014. The figure is far higher than previous estimates of IS's brutal "purification" of northern Iraq.
An estimated 3100 Yazidis were killed, with nearly half of them executed by gunshot, beheading or being burned alive. The others died from injuries, starvation and dehydration during the siege on Mount Sinjar. More than one-third of those kidnapped remain missing.
![Iraq map showing Sinjar](http://web.archive.org./web/20170516055445im_/http://www.smh.com.au/cqstatic/gw48ky/web_Sinjarmap.jpg)
Nihad escaped her captor because of a dispute between Abu Faris, his wife and his other Yazidi girl. In a bid to resolve the tension, Nihad was passed to Abu Faris' cousin. From here, with the help of a group of Yazidi women, she was able to finally escape Mosul.
But although she has escaped IS slavery, Nihad says she will never feel free.
"Because Yazidi people are still there under the captivity of ISIS and because I still have a son under the captivity of ISIS, I don't feel that I am free."
Nihad has lost two sisters and a brother to Islamic State and two more brothers have been forced into training in fighter camps.
Despite the stigma Nihad risks in putting her face to the label of "Islamic State sex slave", she is committed to telling the world about what she endured and the ongoing persecution her people face. "I want all the people to imagine the misery that we have passed through."
Nihad doubts she can ever fully recover from her trauma. "Despite all the difficulty that I have suffered, I have decided to continue my life and to be a success but the sadness inside us is so deep."
But she is hopeful she will be granted a protection visa by the end of the year and embark on a new beginning in Australia.
Nihad's ambition is to finish her education, which she has already resumed, and return to the goals she set before IS blackened her life. "I would like to go there to continue to work to be a teacher," she says.