Elizabeth Smart Spares No Detail in Unflinching Account of Her Horrific 2002 Kidnapping

In the two decades since she was kidnapped and held captive for nine months, Elizabeth Smart has dedicated her life to helping other survivors — and now, she’s sharing more than ever before in a new Netflix documentary.

“After I was rescued, I was very embarrassed by what had happened to me,” the child safety activist, 38, told People on Thursday, January 15, of how she felt after her nine-month captivity nightmare ended in 2003. “Even though my head totally knew it wasn’t my fault, I couldn’t make my heart feel the same way. I felt I’d be judged for it. I ended up feeling very alone and very isolated.”

“I want survivors to know they are not alone. There’s so many of us,” the mom of three, who has written two books and started the Elizabeth Smart Foundation to provide support for survivors of sexual violence, told People. “And I want people who have never experienced this to get a taste of what it’s really like — the depth of fear — to be forced to do things you would never do. There’s a purpose to sharing my story.”

She was about to finish eighth grade in 2002 when she was abducted from her bed in her Salt Lake City home in the middle of the night by pedophile and self-proclaimed religious prophet Brian David Mitchell when she was 14.

As he dragged her away from home on a rugged path, the terrified girl asked him whether he planned to rape and kill her. He replied, “Not yet,” she told People, adding that when they got to his camp, she met his wife, Wanda Barzee, who washed her feet and forced her to put on a robe, warning her that if she didn’t, Mitchell would “rip the clothes off.’”

When Mitchell came into tent, he began to rape her for the first of many times.  “I screamed out, ‘No!’ and he said, ‘If you ever scream like that again, I will kill you,’” she told the outlet. “I thought if I rolled onto my stomach, he wouldn’t be able to rape me. And of course that was not true.” During the assault, “I begged him to stop.”

Afterwards, she revealed, “I could see blood running down my thighs. Then I passed out.” He continued to sexually assault Smart, who had been raised in a strict religious family, four times a day, leaving her feeling “ruined beyond repair” and unworthy of love, she told People, adding that she also feared she would become pregnant after getting her period in captivity. “I thought, ‘Is it better to die than to be a pariah?’ ”

Smart also described other ways Mitchell and Barzee tortured her. “When he took me to the spring where we’d collect water, he would hold the cable and basically walk me like a dog,” says Smart. “I was forced to drink beer after beer until I finally threw up, and he had just left me there face down in my own vomit.”

Mitchell took her out in public occasionally, forcing her to wear a disguise or a headdress. In March 2003, two different couples who had seen photos of the missing girl and her kidnappers on America’s Most Wanted and other media reports spotted her in Sandy, Utah, and called cops.

“It was one of the happiest days,” Smart told People, adding that when she became a mother herself — to daughters Chloé, 10, and Olivia, 7, and son James, 8, with her husband of 13 years, Matthew Gilmour — she finally understood the pain her parents went through as well. “I knew that my family was the reason I wanted to survive.”

Mitchell and Barzee were charged with aggravated kidnapping, aggravated sexual assault, and aggravated burglary. He was convicted in 2010 and is serving life in prison without the possibility of parole. Barzee was convicted and sentenced to 15 years in prison. She was released after nine years in 2018.

Kidnapped: Elizabeth Smart airs on Netflix on Wednesday, January 21.

If you or someone you know is a victim of sexual assault, call the National Sexual Assault hotline at 1-800-656-4673, text HOPE to 64673 or go to rainn.org.