We touched on this story in a prior post, but wanted to let you hear more of the story, and from the woman she helped, Julia. Kayla Mueller clearly lived her Christian beliefs in action.
Via ABC:
Julia arrived in Stockholm looking like any other typical Western teenage girl. An embroidered blue backpack slung over her arm, rhinestone-encrusted sandals sparkling on her feet, and a butterfly clip pulling her long hair back from her big brown eyes. She is petite, barely five feet tall, and looks a couple years younger than her 15 years. She giggles in a taxi on her way to the hotel, her wide eyes darting between the city sites.
She could pass for any other young tourist to the Swedish capital, until she points to the rainbow-colored memorial bracelet wrapped around her wrist. On it is the name “Kayla Mueller” – the American humanitarian aid worker who befriended Julia as they were both imprisoned as slaves for ISIS.
Julia came to Stockholm to reveal for the first time publicly the torture she endured as a 13-year-old Yazidi girl ripped from her family’s Iraqi village and thrown into a violent life of ISIS slavery, becoming one of the last known captives to be held with Mueller before Mueller was killed. Julia’s interview was conducted for the 20/20 Brian Ross Investigates hour “The Girl Left Behind.”
It was only her second time flying on a plane (the first being a one-way trip from Iraq following her harrowing escape from ISIS to her new life in the West) and her first time riding on a train. She agreed to reveal her face publicly, but she asked that her real name be withheld and that she instead be called Julia.
Despite the deeply personal subject matter, Julia said she wanted to tell the world about Kayla, who she believes sacrificed an opportunity to escape the chains of ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi because the American hostage from Prescott, Arizona refused to endanger the rescue of her fellow captives.
“I told Kayla, ‘We want to escape,’ and I asked her to come with us. She told me, ‘No, because I am American, if I escape with you, they will do everything to find us again,'” Julia told ABC News Chief Investigative Correspondent Brian Ross.
“It is better for you to escape alone. I will stay here,” Mueller said, according to Julia.
