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October 5th, 2013 
Peter Nolan
However, she was raped repeatedly by Mitchell as police and relatives
frantically searched for her. At times she could hear officers calling her
name, she said, but did not dare cry out.
“I remember him forcing me on to the ground, fighting the whole way,”
she said. “Then, when he was finished, he stood up, and I was left
alone, feeling absolutely broken. Absolutely shattered. I was broken beyond
repair. I was going to be thrown away”.
Eventually Ms Smart was tethered to a nearby tree and forced to drink alcohol
before being abused by the couple.
“To her, I was a slave, and to him, I was an object,” she said.
“Here I was, a 14-year-old girl, ripped from my family, from the life I
knew, from the people I loved, being raped every day, not knowing when I’d
be able to eat next, not knowing when I’d be able to drink next, and being
chained to a tree,” she said. “I didn’t feel human. I don’t think
there is anything worse you can do to a child.”
The police hunt struggled until Mary Katherine, Ms Smart’s younger sister, who
had pretended to sleep while witnessing the abduction, recalled hearing the
kidnapper’s voice before.
She remembered it as the voice of a man calling himself “Emmanuel”
who had been among a group of homeless people employed by the Smarts to
carry out odd jobs around their home.
A sketch of Emmanuel’s face was put together and shown on prime-time
television, where it was seen by Mitchell’s family. They recognised him and
reported his real name to the police.
In March 2003, Mitchell, Barzee and Ms Smart – disguised in a wig – were
spotted by a motorcyclist and caught by police, who promptly reunited Ms
Smart with her parents.
“‘What is your name?’ one of the officers asked me,” Ms Smart writes
in her memoir. “I felt almost dizzy. I was sick with uncertainty and
fear.”
She recalled being scared to answer: “Don’t give Mitchell a reason, or
he’ll hurt you! Don’t give him a reason to hurt your family!”
However, the officer persisted, asking: “Are you Elizabeth Smart? Because
if you are, your family has missed you so much since you were gone. They
want you back. They love you. They want you to come home.”
After several years of psychiatric treatment and being deemed unfit to stand
trial, Mitchell was in May 2011 sentenced to life in prison for rape, kidnap
and burglary. Barzee is serving a 15-year sentence for her part in the
crime.
Ms Smart, who is now 25, graduated from Brigham Young University in Utah and
last year married Matthew Gilmour, a fellow Mormon, whom she met while
completing missionary work in France. She runs the Elizabeth Smart
foundation, an advocacy group for abused and kidnapped children.
Earlier this year, she offered advice to the three women who escaped from a
house in Cleveland Ohio, after being held captive by Ariel Castro, a former
school bus driver.
“This man has taken so much of your life. There aren’t words to describe
how wicked he is,” she said. “But the best punishment you could
ever give him is to be happy. Because by dwelling on the past, and holding
on to pain and the hurt you’ve had to go through, that’s only allowing him
to steal more of your life away from you, and he doesn’t deserve to do that”.
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