![]() ![]() Mitchell wanted to make her his second wife. On June 5 of that year, self-avowed prophet Brian David Mitchell broke into her house and held a knife to her neck while she was sleeping in bed with her younger sister. ![]() Smart said she doesn’t know whether basic moves from Brazilian jujitsu or Thai boxing, which she learned after the assault, would have helped her in 2002. When she fell asleep on the plane, the man seated next to her began rubbing her inner thigh, she said, noting that charges were filed against him, but there wasn’t enough evidence for prosecution. Smart said she started offering self-defense classes after she was sexually assaulted on a flight in 2019. Her foundation offers a variety of programs, including a Smart Talks podcast and Smart Defense courses designed by martial arts experts. “I feel we really need to provide more education.” “I am certainly not an expert on sex ed, but I am an expert in having my boundaries violated,” she said. This month, Smart launched Wholehearted Consent, a website with information for parents on how to talk to teens about sexual consent. She does her work through the Elizabeth Smart Foundation, which she and her father founded in 2011 with $50,000 awarded to Smart by fashion designer Diane von Furstenberg. Instead, she has learned to focus on the beauty in her life, and she devotes her time to being a child safety advocate, helping other sexual assault survivors and teaching people how to combat and heal from such attacks. Looking back herself, Smart, 35, said those traumatic nine months could have left her bitter and broken. ![]() “When they look back, I’m pretty sure they’ll say that what they went through after I was taken was the most difficult thing they ever did.” “I will call them and tell them that I love them,” she said of her parents, Ed and Lois Smart, who divorced in 2019. Smart was taken at knifepoint at age 14 from her bed in Salt Lake City by a self-described prophet who held her captive for nine months several miles from her home. Their efforts worked, as she was rescued after a stranger spotted her on a busy Salt Lake County street with her kidnappers. They were the ones who kept the pressure on and helped to bring intense national attention to her abduction. On the 20th anniversary of the day she was rescued from her kidnappers, March 12, Elizabeth Smart will do what she always does on that day. Photo for The Washington Post by Chad Kirkland Twenty years ago she was freed from a nine-month long kidnapping. Elizabeth Smart at her home in Wasatch County, Utah. ![]()
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