Caitlan Coleman accused Joshua Boyle of physically and emotionally abusing her while they were held by Taliban-linked militants 
 
 The American woman who was kidnapped in Afghanistan and held hostage for five years – giving birth to three children while in captivity – has accused her husband of physically and emotionally abusing her while the family was being held by Taliban-linked militants. 
 
 The allegations levied by Caitlan Coleman against her Canadian husband Joshua Boyle are contained in newly unsealed court documents obtained by the Ottawa Citizen. 
 
 Canadian American family rescued after five years as captives in Afghanistan Read more 
 
 In the documents, filed earlier this year as part of a family court application aimed at allowing Coleman to leave Canada and return to the US with the couple’s children, Coleman accused her husband of exacerbating the nightmarish ordeal. 
 
 “JB (Joshua Boyle) regularly threatened to kill me by setting me on fire,” Coleman – who is expecting the couple’s fourth child – said in an affidavit. Her husband, she claimed, “had uncontrolled rage, instituted corporal punishment of me, and struck me in a fit of rage”. 
 
 None of the allegations contained in the affidavit have been proven in court. 
 
 Boyle, 34, denied the allegations, and in his own 23-page affidavit, he accused Coleman of assaulting him and of having untreated mental health issues that he claimed caused her to neglect the couple’s children. 
 
 Boyle, Coleman and their three young children were rescued in Pakistan in late 2017. The couple had been abducted five years earlier while backpacking through Afghanistan. Coleman was five months pregnant at the time. 
 
 Shortly after the family landed on Canadian soil, Boyle told reporters that his wife had been raped and one of their children was killed during their time in captivity. The allegations were later denied by the Taliban. 
 
 After a short stay with Boyle’s parents the family attempted to build a normal life in Ottawa, renting an apartment and giving their children their first-ever taste of freedom. 
 
 Months later, the couple was locked in a custody battle in an Ontario court. The Ottawa judge who considered the case said she had not seen anything to suggest that Coleman suffers a mental health issue that would affect her ability to parent. 
 
 “The court does have evidence, on the other hand, that CC (Caitlan Coleman) is healthily and protectively parenting the children,” the judge noted as she granted Coleman temporary custody of the children. 
 
 “To say that the circumstances of this case are tragic in the extreme would be an understatement,” the judge added. “Under the exceptional circumstances of this case, requiring CC and the children to remain in Ottawa would be akin to once again holding them hostage.” 
 
 Children born in Afghanistan captivity fear new lives in Canada won't last Read more 
 
 Coleman, 32, is reportedly now living in her home state of Pennsylvania with the children. 
 
 The judge also issued an order preventing Boyle from contacting or approaching Coleman and the children. 
 
 According to court documents, the pair met in 2002. Four years later, Coleman, a manager at a Quiznos sandwich restaurant, and Boyle, an aspiring journalist, struck up a turbulent, on-off again relationship. 
 
 Their shared interests kept them together, according to Boyle’s affidavit. “We both wanted to travel by way of backpacking, and we both wanted to see the world.” 
 
 The couple married in 2011 while traveling in Central America. After Coleman launched divorce proceedings in 2012, Boyle travelled to Pennsylvania and the couple were reconciled, according to the Ottawa Citizen. 
 
 They agreed to travel Central Asia, pushing forward with their plans even after discovering Coleman was pregnant, according to Boyle’s affidavit. He said he was open about his desire to travel to Afghanistan, hoping to make contacts and gain experience that would help him land a job in journalism. 
 
 In court documents filed by Coleman, she said she reluctantly agreed to embark on the trip after Boyle promised Afghanistan would not be on the itinerary. Boyle only revealed his plans to travel to the country after they had landed in the region, she claimed, “so that I would not back out”. 
 
 The pair was abducted after leaving a Kabul guesthouse in a taxi, and held by the Taliban-linked Haqqani network. 
 
 The documents presented in family court, however offer contrasting takes on how the couple handled life in captivity, with both claiming to have been primary caregivers to the children. 
 
 Coleman accused Boyle of increasingly erratic and irrational behaviour as the years dragged on, saying that he was fixated on “depicting me as an enemy in his life”. 
 
 The guards would often separate them, after which Boyle would accuse her of betraying him by “accepting niceties from the guards and not asking for him more often”, she claimed. 
 
 The abuse by Boyle escalated over the years, she alleged. He would confine her to a small shower stall for weeks at a time, she claimed, and alleged that after a disagreement in 2017, Boyle “hit me in the face hard enough to break my cheekbone”. 
 
 Boyle repeatedly told her that she was “one of the worst people in the world”, Coleman claimed, alleging that her husband suggested at one point that a “husband who kills his wife is justified”. 
 
 In his affidavit, Boyle alleged Coleman neglected the children while in captivity, leaving him in the role of primary caregiver. He said that he often went without food in order to ensure his pregnant wife and children had enough to eat and spent hours crafting toys and gifts out of anything he could find. 
 
 In a second affidavit provided to the court, Coleman alleged that she did not share her husband’s interest in extremism, pointing to Boyle’s earlier marriage to Zaynab Khadr – the eldest daughter of a now-deceased member of Osama bin Laden’s inner circle – as an example. 
 
 In his affidavit, Boyle described the trauma of readjusting to life in Canada. “While captivity was the worst thing that ever happened to me,” he said, “the adjustment to coming home was a very close second”. 
 
 Two months after the family returned to Canada, Boyle was arrested on more than a dozen charges including sexual assault, misleading police and making death threats. He was released on bail in June. The Ontario Court has banned the identification of Boyle’s alleged victims. 

 Caitlan Coleman says her husband, Joshua Boyle, deepened the nightmare of her captivity during their five years as hostages in Central Asia. 
 
 In unsealed court documents, Coleman alleges she was physically and emotionally abused by Boyle while they were being held by the Taliban-linked Haqqani network. 
 
 “J.B. (Joshua Boyle) regularly threatened to kill me by setting me on fire,” Coleman says in an affidavit filed in June as part of a family court application to gain sole custody of the couple’s children 
 
 The specific allegations contained in the affidavits have not been proven in court. 
 
 Coleman, Boyle and their three children, all of whom were born in captivity, were rescued in October 2017 by Pakistani security forces after living as prisoners for five years in Afghanistan and Pakistan. 
 
 The U.S.-born Coleman, 32, is now in Pennsylvania with the children after being granted temporary sole custody of them by an Ottawa family court judge on July 23. 
 
 Ontario Superior Court Justice Tracy Engelking also issued an order restraining Boyle from contacting or coming near Coleman and their children. 
 
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 “To say that the circumstances of this case are tragic in the extreme would be an understatement,” Engelking said in her custody ruling. 
 
 The judge was presented with wildly different stories by Boyle and Coleman, but ultimately decided that it was in the best interests of the children to allow them to return to Pennsylvania with their mother. “Under the exceptional circumstances of this case, requiring C.C. (Caitlan Coleman) and the children to remain in Ottawa would be akin to once again holding them hostage.” 
 
 Boyle, 34, vigorously denied Coleman’s allegations, and levelled his own allegations of abuse in documents filed as part of a failed cross-motion to block his wife from leaving the country with their children. 
 
 In his 23-page affidavit, Boyle alleges his wife assaulted him and neglected their children because of untreated mental health issues. 
 
 He also alleges Coleman tried to push him in front of a Toronto Transit Commission subway car years before they were married. 
 
 Justice Engelking, however, said she received no evidence to support the contention that Coleman suffers from a mental health issue that could affect her suitability as a parent. 
 
 “The court does have evidence, on the other hand, that C.C. is healthily and protectively parenting the children,” Engelking noted before concluding: “Based on all of the evidence before me, I can find little to suggest C.C. would not be a suitable temporary custodian of the children.” 
 
 Obtained by this newspaper after a court application, the documents in the case offer a window into the couple’s deeply troubled relationship and provide new details about their hellish, five-year hostage ordeal. 
 
 Boyle, an aspiring journalist, met Coleman, a Quiznos restaurant manager, online in 2002. They became romantically involved four years later, but theirs was a turbulent, on-again, off-again relationship. 
 
 Boyle says their shared interests sustained them. “We both enjoyed BDSM (bondage),” Boyle says in his affidavit. “We both wanted to travel by way of backpacking, and we both wanted to see the world.” 
 
 They married during a trip through Central America in July 2011, but soon separated. Coleman began divorce proceedings in March 2012. 
 
 One month later, Boyle visited Coleman at her home in Pennsylvania where they reconciled. They agreed to go backpacking through Central Asia, he says, and decided to leave on the trip even after finding out that Coleman was pregnant with their first child. They departed in July 2012. 
 
 In her affidavit, Coleman insists that she reluctantly agreed to the trip only after Boyle promised not to go to Afghanistan. Boyle disclosed his true intentions after they landed in Central Asia, she says, “so that I would not back out.” 
 
 Boyle insists Coleman knew he intended to go to Afghanistan — a trip designed to further his journalistic ambitions. 
 
 “We crossed into Afghanistan for a short while in hopes that I could meet people who could give me a story I could write about,” he says in his affidavit. “I had hoped that personal experience in Afghanistan might help me to land more permanent journalism work.” 
 
 Boyle has previously suggested that they travelled to Afghanistan to do humanitarian work. 
 
 They were taken hostage on Oct. 10, 2012, after leaving a Kabul guest house in a taxi. Coleman was five months pregnant at the time. 
 
 Boyle says their captors inflicted severe physical and psychological damage on them for the next five years, during which they were moved to 19 hideouts in both Afghanistan and Pakistan. 
 
 In their affidavits, Boyle and Coleman offer completely different accounts of their relationship during captivity. 
 
 Coleman says Boyle became increasingly erratic and irrational during their ordeal, and fixated on “depicting me as an enemy in his life.” 
 
 “The guards would separate us for a few days, weeks or months at a time,” she says. “When we were returned together, J.B. would accuse me of betraying him by accepting niceties from the guards and not asking for him more often.” 
 
 After three years in captivity, he became increasingly abusive, she says: “J.B. had uncontrolled rage, instituted corporal punishment of me, and struck me in a fit of rage.” 
 
 He repeatedly told her that she was “one of the worst people in the world,” Coleman says, and suggested that “a husband who kills his wife is justified.” 
 
 After a disagreement in February 2017, she alleges, Boyle “hit me in the face hard enough to break my cheekbone.” 
 
 Coleman alleges Boyle later confined her to a small shower stall for weeks at a time. 
 
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 In his affidavit, Boyle alleges that Coleman neglected their children while in captivity, leaving him as the primary caregiver. “Multiple captors would reference me as the ‘wife and mother, husband and father’ in the family, noting that all nurturing of the children was entirely upon me,” he says. 
 
 Boyle says he slapped his wife once while in captivity as she attempted suicide by trying to overdose on stockpiled medication. 
 
 He often went without food, Boyle says, to give more to his children or pregnant wife, and spent hours whittling toys and gifts for them with a spoon. 
 
 He built a small garden beside the family’s squat toilet, he says, and planted okra, bean and mango seeds so that his children could appreciate gardening. He captured mice for the children to keep as pets, and sewed them clothes from blankets and scraps. He wrote them songs, taught them sign language, made up stories to entertain them, and helped them memorize selections of the Bible and Qur’an, according to his affidavit. 
 
 Boyle says he also taught them about their Canadian and Irish heritage. 
 
 “Their knowledge of Canada was exhaustive enough to being able to identify northern islands such as Devon, Banks and Victoria on hand-drawn maps, a desire to move to the Magdalene Islands due to a Stompin’ Tom Connors song they knew, bedtime stories often drawn from Road to Avonlea, and pretending to be Emily Carr when using mud to finger paint pictures of Salish homes (that always looked suspiciously like our cell, unsurprisingly).” 
 
 READ: From Nazi women and Khadrs to Star Wars and torture: A look at Joshua Boyle’s vast Wikipedia edits 
 
 Coleman, meanwhile, told court that she was the primary caregiver, and was responsible for home-schooling the children during the family’s captivity. 
 
 What’s more, in a second affidavit filed in response to Boyle’s, Coleman alleges she did not share her husband’s interest in Central Asia or the extremist ideologies it harboured. 
 
 “I would like to stress, most strongly, that for more than a decade, the respondent (Boyle) has had an interest in extremist ideologies and in the complete subservience of women. I have never shared that interest.” 
 
 She pointed to his previous marriage to Zaynab Khadr as evidence of his interest in extremism. Khadr is the eldest daughter of Ahmed Said Khadr, a member of Osama bin Laden’s inner circle who died in a firefight with Pakistani forces in October 2003; she outraged many Canadians with her comments in a 2004 documentary in which she suggested that the Sept. 11 terror attacks were justified. 
 
 The Boyle family was rescued last October in a dramatic shootout that made international headlines. Weeks after returning home, the Boyle family met Justin Trudeau in the Prime Minister’s Office. 
 
 Blatchford: Charges or no, it was odd for Trudeau to meet with Boyle family 
 
 In his affidavit, Boyle says that readjusting to life in Canada has been a traumatic experience. “While captivity was the worst thing that ever happened to me,” he says, “the adjustment to coming home was a very close second.” 
 
 Coleman is due to give birth to the couple’s fourth child this month. 
 
 aduffy@postmedia.com
– Caitlan Coleman, the American woman held hostage in Afghanistan for 5 years, says her own husband made the ordeal much worse. In court papers obtained by the Ottawa Citizen, the 32-year-old Coleman says Joshua Boyle, her 34-year-old Canadian husband, became mentally and physically abusive, confining her to a shower stall for weeks at a time and once hitting her hard enough to break her cheekbone. Coleman, who gave birth to the couple's three children in captivity and is pregnant with their fourth, says she only agreed to go backpacking with Boyle in Central Asia after he promised they wouldn't go to Afghanistan. She was five months pregnant when they were kidnapped by Taliban-linked militants after taking a taxi from a Kabul guesthouse in October 2012. Boyle gives a radically different account of their time in captivity in the court papers, which were filed as part of a custody battle in Canada, the Guardian reports. He admits hitting Coleman once, after she allegedly tried to overdose on medication, but he says he became the children's main caregiver after Coleman neglected them. He says he went without food so Coleman and the children could have more, whittled toys from wood, sewed clothes and blankets, and even caught mice for them to have as pets. The judge granted temporary custody to Coleman, who's now in Pennsylvania with the children, and banned Boyle from contacting them. "To say that the circumstances of this case are tragic in the extreme would be an understatement," the judge said. (The family was freed in a dramatic raid last year.)