It's been almost two whole decades since Elizabeth Smart's harrowing story started and then finished nine months later. It's been 14 years since Smart was reunited with her family after Brian David Mitchell and Wanda Barzee kidnapped Smart from her Salt Lake City home and kept her captive while they starved, tortured and raped her. It was a miracle that she was found alive and functioning.
I've never forgotten about Smart or her ordeal. I was only 7-years-old when she was taken, and this story really resonated with me because if it could happen to her, why couldn't it happen to another little girl like me? Smart was only a few years older than me. I was afraid to sleep without a parent for months both during and after Smart's ordeal. I remember when the news announced that Smart was coming home, and the jubilation I felt when I realized that her captors were now going to prison.
I found her book in a discount bookshop when I was on vacation. I picked it up and finished it within 24 hours. While I've read a lot about her case, I don't think I truly appreciated nor understood Smart's resilience or tenacity until now, after going through this mental journey in 300 pages.
The book, called "My Story," starts by giving some background info. We learn about Smart's early life before the kidnapping; her parents, her siblings, her extended family. We learn a little bit about Mitchell and Barzee, who are referred to during her captive time as "Immanuel" and "Hephzibah." We learn why Smart was the one that Mitchell chose to kidnap. It was not a spontaneous crime by any means. That factoid really shocked me. This lunatic really planned this whole thing out, had legitimate thought patterns for everything he did; there were months of plans and reasons for why Smart was his. It was baffling.
The book is super heavy on the first four or five days of Smart's captivity as she comes to term with her new situation. She speaks in detail about her "wedding day," or when Mitchell first brings her to camp. Him and Barzee force Smart to strip naked, put on a white cloth, perform a "religious ceremony," and then Mitchell forces Smart into a tent where he rapes her brutally. The rapes take place every single day, sometimes multiple times a day, for nine months.
The second day, Mitchell and Barzee want to be "of Eden," so they force Smart to walk around their secluded camp naked with them. They perform sexual acts in front of her, justifying it as education so she can perform them with Mitchell later. Smart is 14-years-old, a devout Mormon, and the most innocent girl in the world. She speaks extensively about her pain and frustration of not only having to know about these horrific acts but having to learn in this way. She didn't lose her virginity to a man she loves. She didn't experience sex in a safe, warm environment. She learned through consistent rape and abuse from a man who used a twisted form of religion as a way to warp his pedophilia and thievery into something acceptable.
Smart is very vivid in her language but very classy. While you never are without essential information, much of it is left to the imagination, particularly the more hardcore stuff. We never learn what the one "sexual act" was that Mitchell had to get Smart ocified in order to get her to comply. We never learn what kind of pornography she was forced to see. Oddly enough, you aren't really left curious. You're left so disgusted by everything you're reading about these deplorable people that you just want the ending to come, the part when you know Smart is going home.
My only gripe with this book is how it is laid out. The storyline is extremely intensive on those first few days and then seems to glide over a lot of time until they move to California. You get a few chapters of California, and then you head right back to Utah, where surprise, she's rescued by heroic policemen. I understand that those first few days were pivotal in any hope that Smart would be captured, but I think the book would have been so much more cohesive if there was more fluidity in how the story went. There was a lot of action in the time periods that were chosen, but Smart also really highlighted the utter boredom she faced when she was confined to the camp. If we learned more about what those conditions were like, maybe we could better understand.
I really do recommend this book for anyone who is fascinated with the Smart case. Even if you have never heard of her but you are into true crime and child kidnapping stories, I think you'd enjoy this. You know how it ends, but it's how it gets there that is so incredible. It's hard to believe that Smart was able to survive all of this while only being 14-years-old, but somehow she did. She's now an advocate for missing and exploited children, and I cannot think of a better fit for her.
Elizabeth, you're a hero for missing children everywhere.
