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SALT LAKE CITY -- Elizabeth Smart, who was kidnapped and held for months, spoke about more details of her ordeal.
She described waking up the day she was kidnapped to something cold and sharp against her neck and grabbing her shoes from her closet. The Deseret News reports she recalled she was in a daze and wondered if it was a prank.
The paper quoted her as saying, "I kept thinking, 'This couldn't be real. This couldn't be happening. I'm in my own bed, I'm safe.'"
I kept thinking, 'This couldn't be real. This couldn't be happening.'
–Elizabeth Smart
She made the remarks Thursday at the State Capitol during the 22nd Annual Crime Victims Conference. She spoke of surviving nine months in captivity after being kidnapped from her Salt Lake home on June 5, 2002. She was 14 years old at the time.
She says she tried to reason with the man who took her at knifepoint, but at one point she thought she would be killed and left in the mountains.
She talked about extreme hunger and fear. She says she went without food when her kidnapper did not return to their campsite in California for a week. She talked about trying to collect rain water to drink.
She calls her kidnapping a defining life moment. She says the fear, depression and extreme hunger made her realize how much she loved her parents and family. She says she now knows the extremes of joy and happiness.
She wants crime victims to view themselves differently and says they should be called survivors instead of victims.
Her father, Ed Smart, was in the audience and says even he hadn't heard some of the details she shared.
Brian David Mitchell is charged with her kidnapping. A federal prosecutor said Thursday that a forensic psychologist needs six weeks to prepare a competency evaluation for him.
E-mail: mrichards@ksl.com
