“I would encourage each and every one of you to believe in happiness. Take the time to enjoy your life.” Those were the words of advice given by Elizabeth Smart as she delivered an unapologetic message of hope to the women attending the 2024 Women Aware conference Thursday afternoon.
Smart found herself speaking to a large, enthusiastic crowd that gave her a standing ovation as she entered the main floor of the Black River Coliseum. Many women sat in seats in the upper level of the auditorium because they had purchased tickets just to hear Smart speak.
Smart is the famous survivor of a highly publicized abduction from her home in the middle of the night in 2002, when a strange man crept into her room and abducted the teen at knife-point. Her story captured the nation’s attention, and millions of people celebrated when she was rescued from captivity nine months later.
Smart told her story to the large crowd, who appeared captivated by this story of survival.
Smart relayed the information of how she feared for her life and the life of the younger sister who shared a bed with her.
“I remember for the first time in my experiencing what true fear actually feels like,” Smart commented. “I was 14 years old, and at that point in my life I had only felt fear in lesser circumstances — like before one of my music lessons.”
Smart told of how she was guided by her captor out of the house and through the backyard, out to the sidewalk and up the road. She recalled seeing a pair of headlights slowly approaching her direction and thinking that the car might be her captor’s vehicle.
“As the car slowly drove past me, I could read the word ‘POLICE’ printed on the side,” she remarked. “And they kept driving on, and I wasn’t safe.”
Her captor, who would later be identified as Brian David Mitchell, guided her across the street to a hiking trail, and then off the trail and deep into the woods where she had never gone before.
“I remember asking him if he was going to rape and kill me, if he would just go ahead and do it where we were at,” Smart noted. “But he just looked at me and told me he wasn’t going to rape and kill me.”
Smart was guided to a stand of trees that, just beyond it, had tents and tarps spread out in the area. In that area, she saw a woman who would later be identified as Wanda Ileen Barzee.
“I remember thinking: ‘OK. Nothing bad is going to happen, because a woman is here. She won’t let anything bad happen,’” Smart explained. “I was wrong.”
Shortly after arriving, Smart had been dressed in different clothes and raped as Mitchell proclaimed that she was now his wife. Smart said she felt like she had lost her virtue and purity and would no longer have any value. She was then tethered to a tree with a steel cable.
Smart went on to explain how she felt hopeless at times, and whenever someone asks her why she didn’t try to escape at some point she can only explain that she was doing what she had to in order to survive and to also keep her family safe.
Within that nine-month period, Mitchell and Barzee took Smart with them to southern California in order to avoid the winter in northern Utah. After a while, Smart talked Mitchell and Barzee into returning to Utah.
“There was a comfort in that,” Smart noted. “Just knowing that physically I was in the same area as my family was comforting.”
Not long after returning, Smart and her captors were walking together on a public street in Sandy, Utah, when a few people recognized her captors from news reports. Smart said she wasn’t sure how many police had suddenly arrived, but it felt like several.
“One of the officers took me to the side and told me there was a young girl who had gone missing from the area, and her parents had never given up hope of finding her,” Smart recalled. “At that point, I admitted who I was and they took me to the police station.”
Smart said she worried she was going to be put into jail; but, upon seeing her father, who tightly embraced her and cried tears of joy, she knew she would finally be safe.
“My mother would later tell me that the best way to get revenge would be for me to be happy,” Smart exclaimed. “And that doesn’t mean pretending that you’re happy.
“All of us have experienced trauma. All of us have experienced heartache. But if we keep looking at what we have that makes us happy, we can continue. If we don’t believe in happiness, then what is the point in carrying on?”
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