Elizabeth Smart’s book about the kidnapping that kept her prisoner for 10 months and changed her life will be out next week, and she shared with NBC’s Meredith Vieira that she didn’t “feel human” during the ordeal.
Smart, 25, was kidnapped from her bedroom when she was 14 years old in 2002, and kept prisoner by Brian David Mitchell and his wife, Wanda Barzee, before being rescued. She has publicly talked about her experience, and her upcoming memoir “My Story” also talks about the organization she’s established to help missing and abused children, the Elizabeth Smart Foundation, and her recent marriage.
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Smart shared the horrors of her experience with NBC's Vieira, talking about her feelings of not being human.
“How could I?” she said. “I mean, here I was, a 14-year-old girl, ripped from my family, from my friends, 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.”
The NBC interview, “Elizabeth’s Story,” will air Friday.
Smart was rescued when someone saw her with Mitchell in Utah, and recognized her kidnapper from the “America’s Most Wanted” TV show.
Mitchell is serving two life sentences and Barzee is serving 15 years for what they did to Smart.
Smart told Vieira that the couple took away her dignity.
“To her, I was a slave, and to him, I was an object,” she told Vieira. “I don't think there's anything worse you can do to a child.”
Smart, who has put her life back together after the horror she endured,
told the Blaze that the best advice on doing that came from her mother after she was rescued.
“My mom said, ‘Elizabeth, what this man has done to you is terrible, and there aren’t words to describe how wicked and evil he is … but the best punishment you could ever give him is to be happy. Move forward and follow your dreams and do exactly what you want to do.”
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