Yazidi teen says she escaped ISIS in Iraq, only to be sexually assaulted in Winnipeg

A 19-year-old high school student, she fled to Winnipeg in 2017 to escape the ISIS gunmen who stormed into northern Iraq and forced women and girls into sexual slavery.

She thought she was safe in the Manitoba capital, and then last summer, she allegedly became the victim of sexual assault at the hands of a leader of her own community.

The man accused of repeatedly trying to force himself on her behind closed doors in a darkened room, Hadji Hesso, is the executive director of the Yazidi Association of Manitoba.

Hesso has rubbed shoulders with federal cabinet ministers and MPs, and attended an array of galas. The day after he was charged with sexual assault, he was spotted at the Mayor’s Ball.

“I hope he’s going to stay in jail,” the alleged victim told Global News in a series of exclusive interviews after the Winnipeg Police Service arrested Hesso for a third time on Dec. 2.

After Global News first revealed his arrests, many were shocked that a leader of a Canadian organization that helps Yazidi victims of sexual violence had allegedly preyed upon one of them.

Widely praised for its work, Hesso’s group was an early advocate for victims of ISIS cruelty. In testimony to the Standing Committee on Citizenship and Immigration, he described the trauma of Yazidis.

“Many of the women and girls who have arrived in Canada have been going through a difficult time,” he said. “It’s severe, and it varies from person to person.” He urged the government to “resettle vulnerable Yazidi women and girls here in Canada.”

Now, he is now accused not only of molesting one of them, but of then allegedly threatening her and breaching bail conditions that required him to have no contact with her.

Meanwhile, Global News has learned that his non-profit group has continued to operate despite having been dissolved by the Manitoba government more than a year ago for failing to file annual reports.

The alleged victim cannot be identified due to a court-ordered publication ban. Hesso’s lawyer, Alex Steigerwald, declined to comment. Hesso has not been convicted and denies the allegations.

But in an interview at her family’s Winnipeg home, the alleged victim told her story of war, displacement and claims of re-victimization in her adopted country.

“I just want to tell the people just be really careful,” she said. “Don’t go outside by yourself and just really focus on your safety.”

Ten years ago, the Yazidi ethno-religious minority of northern Iraq suffered one of the worst crimes against humanity of recent times.

Having declared themselves the rulers of an Islamic State, gunmen encircled the villages around Sinjar, the Yazidi heartland, and ordered residents to convert or face death.

Widely recognized as a genocide, the assault was part of the Islamic State’s attempt to wipe out religious diversity from its so-called caliphate.

The terrorist group executed thousands of men, took boys away to be trained as fighters and abducted women and girls to Syria, where they were forced to service ISIS men.

Under ISIS, they were subjected to “enslavement, torture, inhuman treatment, murder and rape, including through sexual slavery,” the United Nations reported in August.

The Winnipeg teen was only 9 at the time, but she recalled the shooting, bodies and blood as she fled on foot with her parents, brothers and sisters.

“We ran to Kurdistan,” she said. “And after that, in 2017, we came to Canada.” She said the family wanted a “safe place” after Iraq.

When they arrived in Winnipeg, local Yazidis helped them get settled. “They helped us to find a house and a school and everything,” she said.

The assistance came from a newly-formed non-profit organization: the Yazidi Association of Manitoba

The Yazidi Association of Manitoba was incorporated in 2017, two months after the federal government announced it would resettle 1,200 Yazidi women, children and their families.

The founding directors were Hesso and two others, provincial government records show. The group’s registered address is Hesso’s residence in Winnipeg.

For the traumatized refugees arriving in the city, who were mostly women and girls with little knowledge of English, the group had a crucial role.

“They were instrumental in helping resettle the Yazidis in Winnipeg,” said Prof. Lori Wilkinson, the Canada Research Chair of Migration Futures at the University of Manitoba’s Department of Sociology and Criminology.

The co-author of a federal government-contracted study on Yazidi refugees, Wilkinson said the group needed distinct support because they were arriving in Canada so soon after the genocide committed by ISIS, also known as DAESH.

“They were captives of DAESH, and then woke up in Canada,” she said.

“Most refugees have been traumatized in some way, but for the Yazidi women in particular, but also some of the kids, they were brought here at a time psychologists would call an acute level of trauma, it just happened.”

Testifying to MPs in 2017, Hesso said his group was working in partnership with Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada.

“We provide socializing opportunities, transportation, medical care, and the most important is interpretation and integration into Canadian society,” he said.

IRCC said it did not provide any direct funding to Hesso’s organization but that the group “participated in consultation sessions and meetings” about services “for this vulnerable population arriving in Winnipeg.”

“We have no other relationship with the Yazidi Association of Manitoba,” a spokesperson said.

In photos on social media, Hesso is seen with Manitoba Premier Wab Kinew, two immigration ministers, Liberal and Conservative MPs, and members of the Winnipeg Police Service and RCMP.

In 2022, his association was commended in the Manitoba legislature in a Ministerial Statement that recognized its “leadership in providing support to Yazidi refugees.”

But according to the Manitoba government, Hesso’s group was dissolved in 2023, after it failed to file annual returns for two consecutive years.

“As of Dec. 9, 2024, Yazidi Association of Manitoba Corp. is not active on the Companies Office registry,” a provincial spokesperson told Global News.

The Association did not respond to emails requesting comment on the matter, nor did it answer questions about Hesso or its sources of funding.

Aurora Family Therapy Centre, a Winnipeg charity, said in a statement to Global News it had partnered with the Yazidi Association of Manitoba and other groups “to deliver enhanced and targeted summer programming to refugee children and youth.”

“We were not aware they were struck off the corporate registry,” said executive director Abdikheir Ahmed. “We will be amending our procedures on a go-forward basis.

“Last summer was the last year of the project and there are no plans for a continued relationship.”

The Yazidi Association of Winnipeg had been part of the alleged victim’s life since she arrived in Winnipeg, but over the summer she found herself alone with Hesso.

“I was looking at him, he was looking at me, and I knew he was going to do something,” she said. “He was trying to touch me, touch my face.”

“I didn’t let him,” she said.

She fended him off but he persisted, she said. “He was always touching my leg and telling me ‘give me your hand,’” she alleged.

The events allegedly occurred when they were alone in the canteen of a community facility, with the door closed and lights out.

At his request, she said she would not tell anyone, she alleged. But later, he allegedly texted her asking for an explicit sexual favour, she said.

She told her teachers of the alleged incidents, the school called the police, and officers arrived to take her videotaped statement.

On the same day he was charged, Hesso was released on an undertaking. The following night, he attended the Mayor’s Ball, according to the seating chart and photos on his social media.

The City of Winnipeg said guests either purchased tickets or attended through tickets “purchased by an external organization.”

Twelve days later, Hesso was arrested again, this time for allegedly violating a bail condition requiring him not to have direct or indirect contact with the alleged victim.

A relative of Hesso allegedly went to her house and tried to persuade her to drop her complaint, accusing her of being paid to make the allegations.

Hesso has denied the allegation that he sent a relative to her house.

He was released on bail on Nov. 28, but police arrested him again on Dec. 2 for allegedly threatening the alleged victim and failing to comply with his bail conditions.

The latest charges stem from an alleged encounter near the teen’s home. She and her sister were walking when they heard someone call out, “We will kill you one day,” she said.

“And I saw him,” she said.

He was driving and looked at her, she added. Another individual was also in the car, she said. She said she can’t be sure it was his voice, but she thought it was.

Wilkinson said it was not unusual for vulnerable women to become victims of sexual crimes.

“In every single community — the Canadian community, the immigrant communities — there’s always going to be some people who take advantage of the situation, knowing full well that what they’re doing is destroying somebody’s life,” she said.

“And the actions of one guy should not taint the overall good work that this organization has done.”

The Yazidi Association of Manitoba said Hesso remained in his position, but the Ethnocultural Council of Manitoba has removed him from its board, saying it was “not suitable” for him to continue.

Hesso remains in custody. But the alleged victim said she was worried the Manitoba court might release him on bail for a third time.

The Yazidi community had been sympathetic to her, she said.

“Yes, most of them are supporting me, and they are behind my back and helping me,” she said.

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