Healing after her captivity

The American woman raped and tortured in Pakistan during a five-year hostage ordeal is speaking out for the first time from her hospital bed, saying she just wants to be left alone as she recovers from the “dark days.”

“Why don’t I have the right to just be myself and be with my husband and children?” Caitlan Boyle wrote in an email to her hometown Pennsylvania paper. “Everybody says ‘No, you have to come out and talk about it,’ but no, no I don’t and everybody nice has said it’s my choice and I can talk when I want, and to whom I want.”

Her Canadian husband, Joshua Boyle, said in an email to the Associated Press, “My wife has been through hell, and she has to be my first priority right now.”

His wife was rushed to the hospital earlier this week for an undisclosed medical emergency, but says she hopes to go home soon.

She told The (York) Daily Record she preferred to be referred to as “Caitlan Boyle,” not “Caitlan Coleman” as she has been widely called in news reports, and that “fond memories helped to brighten some of the dark days.”

The couple returned to Canada last week after Pakistan’s military took credit for freeing them from a Talibanaffiliated network. Boyle gave birth in captivity to three children, who are adjusting to their new life in Ontario.

The pair have said Boyle was impregnated by a militant who raped her and that the baby girl was killed by their captors.