The Elizabeth Smart story is one of terror and survival. In 2002 a man named Brian David Mitchell kidnapped the then 14-year-old Smart from her bedroom in Salt Lake City, Utah. For the next nine-months Mitchell would hold Smart captive dragging her from place to place, with his wife, tormenting and raping the young girl on a daily basis. Now 25-years-old Elizabeth Smart is telling her story to the world. In her new memoir "My Story" Smart recounts her days in captivity holding back no detail, despite how painful it may be.
"The next nine months, my days consisted of being hungry, of being bored to death because he talked nonstop, always about himself," Smart said in an interview with Anderson Cooper. "I mean, talk about self-absorbed. And then my days consisted of being raped. I mean not just once, multiple times a day." Smart also says she felt like she hit "rock bottom." She describes being forced to wear a "nasty robe" or "go naked." She also says Mitchell and his wife would force her to drink alcohol and then leave her caked in her own vomit after she would pass out.
"I mean, just every time I thought it couldn't get worse, something always happened," Smart says in her Anderson Cooper interview." Smart talks about the many opportunities she had for escape but was too afraid to take. From the moment she was taken from her safe warm bed right up until she was rescued in March of 2003, Elizabeth Smart lived in fear that she would die and her family would be killed. Those were the threats used by Mitchell and his wife to keep the 14-year-old child submissive.
In one instance Mitchell and his wife had Elizabeth Smart in a library when a police officer came up to the couple and the girl. Smart and Mitchell's wife were covered in veils from head to toe; only their eyes were exposed. The officer asked Smart if she was the missing girl from Salt Lake City. Smart, too terrified of what might happen to her family if she said yes, told the officer she was not the girl he was looking for.
"You can never judge a child or a victim of any crime on what they should have done, because you weren't there and you don't know and you have no right just to sit in your armchair at home and say 'Well, why didn't you escape? Why didn't you do this?' I mean, they just don't know. That's wrong. And I was 14," Smart told Cooper. "I was a little girl. And I had seen this man successfully kidnap me, he successfully chained me up, he successfully raped me, he successfully did all of these things."
"What was to say that he wouldn't kill me when he'd make those threats to me," Smart continued. "What was to say that he wouldn't kill my family?" In her book Smart recounts how she was able to manipulate her captor and convince him God's plan was for the "family" to return to Salt Lake city. When the trio retuned and an officer noticed a girl in dirty robes and a veil wondering around, the officer asked if she was Elizabeth Smart. "Yes" Smart replied, with that her ordeal was over.
With both of her captors now in jail Smart has moved on with her life. She is married, a devout Mormon and spends her time with her family. Smart says she wanted to write this book so she could show other victims and other survivors that there is hope. Smart says she still lives by the words her mother spoke to her on the day she was rescued. "The best punishment you could ever give him is to be happy, to move forward with your life and to do what you want to do. By feeling sorry for yourself and by holding on to what's happened to you that's only allowing him to steal more of your life away from you, and he doesn't deserve another second."
More From Latin Times
Pregnant Woman Gives Birth On lawn Of Mexican Clinic After Being forced To Wait For Treatment
Did Christian Chavez Attempt Suicide? Singer Says Twitter Photos A Joke, Family Confirms His 'Extreme Crisis'
© 2025 Latin Times. All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
