A decade after she was snatched from the bed she was sharing with her sister, then held hostage and sexually abused for nine months, Elizabeth Smart is set to graduate college, engaged and the founder of an organization meant to help prevent crimes against children.She also found forgiveness.
Smart, now 24, was kidnapped from her Utah home and abused by Brian Mitchell when she was 14 years old. She was rescued nine months later after being recognized on the street; her captor is now serving a life sentence in federal prison.
Smart will speak about her abduction and forgiveness March 8 at the USF Performing Arts Center, formerly known as Scottish Rite Center.
The event, hosted by the Fort Wayne Women’s Bureau and sponsored by 3Rivers Federal Credit Union, will raise money for the Women’s Bureau. Louise Jackson, CEO of the Women’s Bureau, says child abuse might be on Fort Wayne’s collective mind at this time, referencing the December murder of Aliahna Lemmon.
“That (event) may draw people to hear Elizabeth and may help people in the community heal from that terrible loss that we had,” Jackson says.
Part of Smart’s talk will focus on how she was able to get through the ordeal and the good that has come from her abduction, she said in a phone interview from her Utah home.
Through Smart’s foundation, and through the attention she has received since her kidnapping, she has spoken to thousands of people about her ordeal.
“If I hadn’t been kidnapped, if I hadn’t been through everything that I’d been through, if the media hadn’t played such a huge role in the entire case, nobody would listen to me,” Smart says. “I would just be another girl on the street.
“Since I can make a difference and people will listen to me when I speak, it’s when I realized I want to make a difference for other people. I have had this pretty horrific experience, but it can open so many doors for me that otherwise wouldn’t have been opened.
“Thank goodness it did happen to me and not somebody else, and I can go on and speak on it, and I’ll be fine. I can come home at night, and it won’t haunt me, and it won’t stop me from being happy. But somebody else, maybe not.”
Smart says although her experiences have made her more cautious, it hasn’t affected her relationships much. She points out that Mitchell is older than her dad, so she put him in a different category from men she might date.
“Knowing that I would have that opportunity to date if I wanted, knowing I could go out with boys my own age, knowing I was sort of master of my own destiny so to speak, I decided when I wanted to be in a relationship,” she says, and “I decided when I was done in a relationship. I don’t think that it stopped me from entering a relationship when I felt good about someone.”
Relationships are often affected when someone has experienced sexual abuse, says Abby Widmer, director for the Women’s Bureau’s rape awareness program.
“(Rape) affects every morsel of their body,” Widmer says. “There are things you wouldn’t think that are affected in a trauma like that. Relationships are a big one.”
Widmer points out that women who are raped will often have trust issues. Often, they will become hypervigilant, constantly checking to see whether doors and windows are locked, assuring no one is in the room with them.
In fact, Widmer calls it rare for someone to say an assault doesn’t have an effect on their relationships. She suggests that perhaps Smart has an excellent support system, and some of the people who have most trouble dealing with what has happened to them are those without a support system.
Smart says she doesn’t think about her abduction a lot and advice from her mother is part of how she has managed to move on.
“She more or less said the best punishment I can give to my captor was to be happy and to do things that I wanted to do and to live my life the way I wanted to live it,” she says.
“The perpetrator, they just walk away and don’t think about it again, and the victim, they carry that pain around with them every single day of their lives, and it becomes so incredibly difficult to function. Nobody should be living their life like that. (You have to) say, ‘No, you can’t do this to me. I’m going to do something about it. I’m taking my life back.’ That’s why I do what I do.”
Smart is a senior at Brigham Young University, where she is majoring in harp performance. She’s played the harp since she was 5.
She admits that playing the harp has nothing to do with her eventual career goals, which are to work in child advocacy – something she already does through her speaking engagements and the Elizabeth Smart Foundation. She urges those who have experienced abuse to speak up, as many who have been raped never tell anyone.
“If you think that person that abused you is still out there, there’s a good chance he’s hurting someone else,” she says. “It could stop if you come forward and talk about it.”
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