We can’t imagine the anguish of Kayla Mueller’s family. We can try, but our thoughts skim off the surface. Perhaps, when news came that the 26-year-old aid worker had been killed in an airstrike in Syria, her parents initially comforted themselves with the thought that her final days had not been as bad as those of some of the Islamic State’s hostages. It was reported, after all, that she had converted to Islam and been given a decent burial.

Now, even that consolation has been ripped away. An escaped Yezidi girl reports that the volunteer from Arizona, who had gone to Syria because she wanted to help its people, had been abused like the other captives, subjected to frequent rape and torture by Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the brigand chieftain who, blaspheming against his professed faith, presumes to call himself Caliph of Islam.