TORONTO, Nov 21 (INP) The American woman held hostage by the Taliban says she was beaten and raped as she tried to protect her children from their captors. Caitlan Coleman Boyle, 31, who was abducted while travelling in Afghanistan with her husband, Joshua Boyle, 34, of Perth-Andover, Canada, and had three children in captivity described the brutal treatment her family endured in captivity, in an exclusive broadcast interview with ABC News. She said some of their guards “hated children” and targeted their eldest son for beatings, sometimes with a stick, claiming the young boy was “making problems” or being “too loud.” When Coleman Boyle tried to intervene, she was beaten as well. “I would get beaten or hit or thrown on the ground,” Coleman Boyle said. According to her husband, Coleman Boyle sustained serious injuries while fighting to keep their captors from her children. “She had a broken cheekbone,” Boyle said. “She actually broke her own hand punching one of them. She broke her fingers, so she was very proud of that injury.” She accused her captors of even more grievous crimes, saying the guards murdered their unborn daughter in a “forced abortion,” and she was later raped by two men in retribution for trying to report the crime to their superiors. “They just kept saying that this will happen again if we don’t stop speaking about the forced abortion, that this happened because we were trying to tell people what they had done and that it would happen again,” Coleman Boyle said. The two told ABC News they are speaking out so soon after their release because they want justice for their abusers, hoping Taliban leaders will be put on trial for war crimes or otherwise be held accountable in the tribal justice system. “Our focus is on trying to hold accountable those who have committed grave human rights violations against us and against others,” Boyle said. “I lost a daughter. That was more of a crushing blow to me than the years. What they did was a crime against humanity by international law.” According to Boyle, who says he was shackled for the duration of his captivity, the family was usually held in a single room, often underground, sometimes on a concrete floor, sometimes on a dirt floor. The parents used discarded items as makeshift toys for their children. The physical abuse of the family escalated, Boyle said, when the Haqqani network demanded he join the extremist group as a Western propagandist. “They had come four different times, to offer employment in the group and I made it very clear that I’d rather be the hostage than be on your side of the cage.” Boyle said. “I’d rather be inside than outside.” His refusal had serious consequences. “There were beatings. There was violence. Then they’d come to make the offer again. Still said no. More beatings, more violence. Maybe that’ll be the solution. Still no,” Boyle said. “And after the final time — that’s when they killed our daughter. And after that, there were no more intimations of recruitment.” Coleman Boyle, said one day they came into the cell, and they took my husband out forcefully, dragging him out, and one of the guards threw me down on the ground, hitting me and shouting, ‘I will kill you. “That’s when the assault happened. It was with two men. And then there was a third at the door. And afterwards, the animals wouldn’t even give me back my clothes.” The day after she was raped, Coleman Boyle said, Pakistani gunships strafed Haqqani positions in North Waziristan. “There were two helicopters with Gatling guns firing constantly,” she said. “There was a lot of AK-47 fire, and there were even some larger explosions.” Shrapnel struck the buildings where Coleman Boyle and Boyle were held separately. “It was a big, big battle. And our guards were hiding out of sight. They were absolutely terrified,” she said. “But my husband and I were each laughing to ourselves thinking, ‘I hope that these sons of bitches die today.” The family was freed in mid-October in what was described by the Pakistani army as an operation carried out by Pakistani troops They weren’t ready to answer lingering questions about his past and the circumstances leading to their capture and release. Boyle was previously married to a fellow Canadian, Zaynab Khadr, who had family ties to al-Qaeda. Her father was a suspected al-Qaeda financer killed by Pakistani security forces, and her younger brother Omar Khadr was once the youngest detainee at the U.S. terrorist prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. He has since been released. Boyle refused to discuss with ABC News why he was in Afghanistan, however, saying he has already answered those questions from the news media. INP/AH