Unimaginable Horror: The Plights of Girls in Nigeria

WASHINGTON - At 15 years old, Deborah Peters has lived an unimaginable horror. She was 12 years old when three members of the Islamist terrorist group, Boko Haram, stormed her family's home in northern Nigeria and shot her father.

"They go ahead and shoot him three times in his chest,” she says. “He was shouting, ‘Jesus,’ so he fell down."

The men then turned the gun on Deborah's young brother.

"When they shoot him two times in his chest, he started moving," she says. "They see he's not dead yet, so they shoot him in his mouth [and] he died immediately."

Deborah says after the men killed her father and brother, they tied her up and left her between their dead bodies. Soldiers found her the next day and reunited her with her mother who had been out of town.

She says the trauma of the shootings has been too much to bare.

"I was in shock," she says. "My mom took me to hospital and I spent almost a month. After that, I always think about that and shout to myself, and my mom was scared and she always prayed for me that everything would disappear so I wouldn't think about this."

Deborah says her family was targeted because of their Christian faith. Her father was a pastor and Boko Haram feared her brother would grow up to become one too.

She says her mother was also wanted because she had converted from Islam to Christianity.
"They're still looking for my mom to kill her right now," she says.

The attack on Deborah's family is just one the many atrocities committed by Boko Haram. The group recently kidnapped more than 300 girls from the same village where Deborah's family comes from.
She says, "I just pray and ask God to send them back home safely."

Deborah says she is sharing her story to help bring the girls she calls her sisters home. She says no one should have to live the terror she's lived because of Boko Haram.

"If people hear my story, I think they will understand and they will know more of what God said and they will understand what it means to stand strong,” says Deborah.

She was able to escape and come to the United States with the help of the group Jubilee Campaign. They work to help members of persecuted churches.

"We felt we had to try to get her out,” says Ann Buwalda, executive director of the Jubilee Campaign. “We felt that her life was a life that could be rehabilitated and a testimony to God's grace and restoring her to a new life."

Deborah is now living in Virginia and enrolled in a Christian school

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