(CNN) - Four years ago, Sam Sally left her hometown in Indiana for a vacation in Turkey.
During the trip, Sally claims her husband all but forced her and her children into joining ISIS in Syria. Now, out of Raqqa and in Syrian Kurdish custody, Sally must explain how her husband died fighting for ISIS and prove her innocence to U.S. authorities if she ever hopes to return home with her four kids.
Sally told CNN she had no choice, and recounted how her husband, Moussa, became abusive, bought teenage Yazidi sex slaves and made her 10-year-old son appear in one of ISIS’s propaganda videos.
They started with a mundane life, running a delivery business. Then they went on their vacation to Turkey.
Sally said her husband took the family to a border town, where she was coerced into crossing into ISIS’s world.
At the ISIS border crossing, she said she faced an impossible choice: her husband grabbed little Sarah, 5, while she had Matthew, 10.
“The position I was in was to stay there with my son or watch my daughter leave with my husband, and I had to make a decision,” she said. “I thought - like I said - we could just walk across the border and we could come back again."
She chose to keep the family together. Sally understands it's hard to believe she never realized what was happening.
She, Matthew, Sarah and two more children who were born in the so-called caliphate are in limbo. And whether they go home or not depends in part on how well Sally explains her innocence in the four-year ordeal they endured.
She said people “can think whatever they want to believe, but they've never been put in a situation to make a decision like that."
When they joined the world of ISIS’s cruelty, it was also when the gentle comforts of her marriage ended. Sally’s husband Moussa, who never even seemed devout in America, became an abusive monster.
"Before he used to spoil me - 'I love you.' I mean, we were very much in love. The romance never left,” she said. “As soon as we came here it was completely different. Everything was completely different. I was a dog. I didn't have any choice. It was extremely violent."
Moussa traveled a lot to fight. He beat Sally at home, but still had two more children with her in Raqqa.
Remarkably, Moussa also bought slaves: Yazidi girls captured by ISIS in 2014.
They spent $20,000 on two teenage girls, Soad and Bedrine, and a younger boy, Aham.
It was done to keep her company, she said, and rescue the slaves to a better life.
"When I met Soad, I couldn't think about money. I would have spent every dollar I had on her, to bring her," she said.
Yet Moussa repeatedly raped the girls.
"That is true. But in every house that she was in before, that was the same situation, but she did not have the support of someone like me,” Sally said.
She claimed the situation in her house was better than for most Yazidi girls, thousands of whom were captured in 2014 when ISIS overran their home at Mount Sinjar in Iraq.
“It would have been so much worse with anybody else,” Sally said. “And no, no one will ever be able to imagine what it's like to watch their husband rape a 14-year-old girl. Ever. And then she comes to you after crying and I hold her and tell her 'It's going to be okay. Everything is going to be fine, just be patient.'
"I would never apologize for bringing those girls to my house. We knew that if we were just patient we would stick through it together. You understand? I was like their mother."
Astonishingly, Soad sent her a message from a refugee camp, confirming Sally’s kindness, and how she was beaten black and blue as she tried to protect her from Moussa.
"I am doing well, with my family, and I want to see you even just once more, let me know what I can do to get you out," Soad said in the video.
Yet the terror did not stop there.
Matthew, born in Texas of Sally’s first marriage to an American soldier, was a prized cast member for an ISIS film shoot.
"It was not by choice. I ended up with two broken ribs on that video. I fought. I fought. I fought," Sally said.
Matthew said, "it was hard. I did not want to do it. He would hit me, he would stress me."
Moussa died in a drone strike late last year.
"I was able to breathe. I was like - okay - we can start phase two," Sally said of his death.
Tens of thousands fled the Raqqa siege, but Sally said she only felt safe at the very end, leaving with the last hundreds of ISIS soldiers and families given passage out in a deal.
The FBI has interviewed them, but there are no charges yet, or tickets back home.
"We want to eat McDonald’s. You know, we want to live a normal life for us again," Sally said.
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