Kidnap Survivor Elizabeth Smart Relives the Night Her Captor Made Her His Virgin Bride

Elizabeth Smart says she was still trying to process the terror of being kidnapped from her bed in the middle of the night when her abductor delivered another chilling message.

Brian David Mitchell, the self-styled street preacher who took Smart from her Salt Lake City home on June 5, 2002, told the 14-year-old that he planned to make her his wife — right there in the run-down tent where he kept her.

“I was in shock,” Smart, now 38, says in this week’s cover story. “I thought, ‘He can’t be serious.’ You can’t just kidnap a child and then say, you’re my wife now. It’s not legal. It’s not okay. I never said yes. I never said I do. None of this is okay.”

Smart is revisiting her ordeal in a new Netflix documentary, Kidnapped: Elizabeth Smart, debuting Jan. 21.

Now a married mother of three, Smart has spoken publicly about her abduction for years. She has written several bestselling books, launched the Elizabeth Smart Foundation to support victims, and used her platform to advocate against ***** violence.

This documentary, she says, expands the story beyond her own voice. It includes interviews with her father, Ed Smart, 70; her sister, Mary Katherine Smart, 33; witnesses who recall seeing her in public with her head covered but didn’t realize she was the missing teen; and investigators who worked the case.

Smart describes her captivity as brutal and dehumanizing — a period marked by repeated **** assaults, confinement in darkness, and being given scraps of food. She says revisiting those memories is painful, but she hopes the documentary helps people understand what victims can endure during an assault — and what can linger long after it ends.

After Mitchell told her he was going to marry her, Smart says she protested.

“I remember even trying to explain to him why it wasn’t okay,” she says.

When he ignored her, she screamed no. Smart says Mitchell responded by threatening to kill her — and then her family — if she ever did it again.

Shaking with fear, she recalls him telling her they were going to “consummate our marriage.”

“I remember just wanting to hold him off long enough because I thought someone would rescue me,” she says. “I even got to the point of being like, ‘Well, shouldn’t we at least get to know each other?’ while trying to create that time for someone to show up.

“He did not fall for that,” she adds. “But I mean, I tried to do everything I could to hold off the inevitable.”

When Mitchell raped her, Smart says she was sobbing and begged him to stop.

“I remember it just being so painful,” she says.

Mitchell was convicted in 2010 of kidnapping Smart and sentenced to life in prison. His wife, Wanda Barzee, was also convicted for her role and released from prison in 2018. She was arrested in May 2025 after allegedly visiting two Utah parks, which violated her status as a registered *** offender.

After Smart was rescued, she turned the trauma she survived into a mission to support others.

“One of the biggest tragedies I come across in my advocacy work,” she says, “is that with so many victims that I meet, their bodies are still breathing, but they’re not living. It’s like a death, a living death, and the loss of life that I see these victims dealing with, that is the most tragic thing that I come across.”

She also points to what she believes is one of the simplest — and most powerful — ways people can help survivors: start by believing them.

“The first thing all of us can do is start by believing victims,” she says.

Too often, she says, people immediately scrutinize the person reporting the assault. “Well, what’s her background? Oh, well, she worked at a bar? Oh, she’s a pole dancer? We just immediately start picking apart the victim. Is she worthy of our belief? Is she actually telling the truth? Does she have a history of lying?”

“Only between two and 8% of reports are false. So 92% of victims are telling the truth and I would rather be wrong. I would rather believe someone and be wrong than never not believe a victim.”

In the documentary, Smart also describes the mindset that helped her endure: refusing to stop imagining escape.

“I always thought about getting away,” she says. “I always thought about getting back to my family. I never stopped thinking about that.”

Still, she acknowledges there were moments she felt overwhelmed, hopeless, and depressed — and says the thing that helped her keep going most was hope itself.

“Why would any of us be alive if we didn’t have hope?” she says. “Hope knowing that life is only going to get better. Hope that tomorrow’s better than today. Hope for happy memories to come.”

“Happiness,” she says, “is possible for all of us.”