Wichita ? When Gracia Burnham returned to the Philippines, her three children asked whether she would return.

“We have that conversation a lot,” she said. “We went over there once and their dad didn’t come home.”

Her late husband, Martin Burnham, died in the Philippines after more than a year of being held hostage by a rebel Muslim group. She herself was shot in the leg during the military raid that freed her and left her husband dead.

When the Rose Hill woman went back last month, it wasn’t to visit her friends and former colleagues in mission work. It was to testify against eight members of Abu Sayyaf, the group that held her and her husband hostage before she was rescued two years ago.

Burnham, who has written a book about her ordeal and is a frequent speaker to Christian groups, said the FBI called her several weeks before her trip and asked her to keep it secret for security reasons.

Burnham arrived July 26 in Manila and spent the next day and a half preparing her testimony with Filipino prosecutors.

Burnham was prepared to testify for two days but was on the stand about three hours. She looked at the defendants only once, when she was asked to identify her abductors.

She recognized six of the men, she said.

Seven of the men joined the Abu Sayyaf primarily to get money to marry, Burnham said, not because they hated the United States.

“My heart went out to those kids,” she said. “They just made a bad decision.”

During her testimony, one defense attorney walked out to give an interview. Another defense lawyer asked her to sign a copy of her book, “In the Presence of My Enemies.”

“I happen to believe they deserve a good defender,” Burnham said, “not just someone sitting there filling a chair.”