Kidnapping victim Elizabeth Smart says she contemplated killing herself after being raped and beaten by her abductor.
Smart was 14 years old when she was abducted from her bedroom in Salt Lake City and held in a remote spot in the woods in 2002 for nine months.
‘For me, because I grew up in a very conservative Christian neighborhood, the first time I was raped I remember feeling devastated,’ Smart said in a Crime Watch Daily interview set to air Tuesday.
Elizabeth Smart, who was kidnapped from her Salt Lake City home in 2002, says she contemplated killing herself after being raped and beaten by her abductor for nine months
‘I felt like it would be better to be dead than to continue living being a rape victim, being a rape survivor. I felt in that moment if there had been an easy way out, I probably would have taken it.’
Smart, who is now 29 and a married mother of two, was raped up to four times a day by Brian David Mitchell after he broke into her parent’s home and kidnapped her.
He was given a life sentence for the kidnapping and his wife Wanda Barzee is also serving jail time for helping to hold Smart captive.
Smart – who also recalled being tied to a tree, beaten and drugged – said she was confused when she was eventually rescued after nine months in captivity.
Smart was raped up to four times a day, beaten and chained between trees by Brian David Mitchell for nine months. She was eventually rescued in 2003
Brian David Mitchell was given a life sentence for the kidnapping and his wife Wanda Barzee is also serving jail time for helping to hold Smart captive
‘One second I was being reunited with my parents, the next second I was being questioned. The next second they take me up to the hospital… then they’re like, “Oh, take off your clothes. Oh, let’s do this kit on you”,’ Smart said.
‘Nobody was really telling me anything and I remember when they were doing the rape kit, I just remember thinking, “What’s going on?”‘
During an hour-long interview with Meredith Vieira in 2013, Smart returned to the remote spot where she had been chained up and raped every day.
She said she tried to rationalize with Mitchell as he forced her up the remote path, saying: ‘If you’re going to rape and kill me, will you please just do it here so that my parents can find my body?’
When they finally arrived at the campsite where Mitchell’s wife was waiting, Smart said she begged and cried for him not to rape her.
‘He raped me right there on the floor of the tent and then when he was finished I was left alone feeling absolutely broken absolutely shattered. I was broken beyond repair,’ she told Vieira.
‘Every time I thought “OK this cannot get worse”, it always did.’
Brian David Mitchell broke into Smart’s home (above) in Salt Lake City and kidnapped her from her bed back in 2002
Elizabeth’s father, Ed Smart, holds a thumbs up as he stands with his daughter and wife Lois at the White House in 2003 – just months after she was rescued
Smart was finally rescued after she, Mitchell and his wife took a trip to a local Walmart. Someone in the store called police and said that she thought she saw the man whose picture she had seen on the news in connection to the Elizabeth Smart disappearance.
The officer took all three into the police station, and it was only when Smart’s father Ed came into the interrogation room that she said she knew everything was going to be alright.
In the years after her kidnapping, Smart has become an author, philanthropist and motivational speaker. She is also a correspondent for the TV show ‘Crime Watch Daily’.
Smart and her husband Matthew Gilmour have two children together.
Crime Watch Daily with Chris Hansen airs Tuesday.