My Story

My Story

My Story

My Story

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Overview

The harrowing true story of abduction and survival from the courageous young woman who lived it—now the subject of a Lifetime original movie, I Am Elizabeth Smart.

In this memoir, Elizabeth Smart reveals how she survived and the secret to forging a new life in the wake of a brutal crime. On June 5, 2002, fourteen-year-old Elizabeth Smart, the daughter of a close-knit Mormon family, was taken from her home in the middle of the night by religious fanatic Brian David Mitchell and his wife, Wanda Barzee. Elizabeth was kept chained, dressed in disguise, repeatedly raped, and told she and her family would be killed if she tried to escape. After her rescue on March 12, 2003, she rejoined her family and worked to pick up the pieces of her life.

With My Story, Elizabeth tells of the constant fear she endured every hour, her courageous determination to maintain hope, and how she devised a plan to manipulate her captors and convinced them to return to Utah, where she was rescued minutes after arriving. Smart explains how her faith helped her stay sane in the midst of a nightmare and how she found the strength to confront her captors at their trial and see that justice was served.

In the years after her rescue, Smart transformed from victim to advocate, traveling the country and working to educate, inspire and foster change. She has created a foundation to help prevent crimes against children and is a frequent public speaker. She and her husband, Matthew Gilmour, now have two children.


Product Details

ISBN-13: 9781466835405
Publisher: St. Martin's Publishing Group
Publication date: 10/07/2013
Sold by: Macmillan
Format: eBook
Pages: 320
Sales rank: 172,921
File size: 1 MB

About the Author

About The Author

ELIZABETH SMART is an American activist and president of the Elizabeth Smart Foundation. She first gained widespread attention at age fourteen when she was kidnapped from her home and rescued nine months later. Smart's #1 New York Times bestselling memoir My Story describes her experience, and her follow-up, Where There's Hope, is an inspiring guide to healing after trauma.

Chris Stewart
is a former U. S. Air Force pilot assigned to fly the SR-71 Blackbird and B-1 bomber. He is the author of successful and acclaimed thrillers including Shattered Bone, The Kill Box, and The Third Consequence. He lives in Farmington, Utah.


ELIZABETH SMART is an American activist and president of the Elizabeth Smart Foundation. She first gained widespread attention at age fourteen when she was kidnapped from her home and rescued nine months later. Smart's #1 New York Times bestselling memoir My Story describes her experience, and her follow-up, Where There's Hope, is an inspiring guide to healing after trauma.
Chris Stewart is a former U. S. Air Force pilot assigned to fly the SR-71 Blackbird and B-1 bomber. He is the author of successful and acclaimed thrillers including Shattered Bone, The Kill Box, and The Third Consequence. He lives in Farmington, Utah.

Read an Excerpt

My Story


By Elizabeth Smart, Chris Stewart

St. Martin's Press

Copyright © 2013 Elizabeth Smart
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4668-3540-5



CHAPTER 1

Elizabeth


It's funny, some of the things that I remember, many of the details forever burned in my mind.

It's as if I can still smell the air, hear the mountain leaves rustle above me, feel the fabric of the veil that Brian David Mitchell stretched across my face. I can picture every detail of my surroundings: the tent, the washbasin, the oppressive dugout full of spiders and mice. I can feel the cut of the steel cable wrapped so tightly around my ankle, the scorch of the summer heat lifting off the side of the hill, the swaying of the Greyhound bus as we fled to California. I can still see the people who were around me, their blank expressions, their fear of how we were dressed, my veil and the dirty robes, the looks of confusion in their eyes.

I remember so many overwhelming feelings and emotions. Terror that is utterly indescribable, even to this day. Embarrassment and shame so deep, I felt as if my very worth had been tossed upon the ground. Despair. Starving hunger. Fatigue and thirst and a nakedness that bares one to the bones. Intruding hands. Pain and burning. The leering of his dark eyes. A deep longing for my family. A heartbreaking yearning to go home.

All of these memories are a part of me now, the DNA inside me. Indeed, these are the things that have moved and shaped me, sometimes twisting, sometimes wrenching me into the person I am today.

Sometime long before I was taken, I had been told that when someone dies, the first thing you forget is the sound of their voice. This thought terrified me. What if I could no longer remember my mother's voice, a sound I had heard every day of my life! I started to think of her, and other members of my family and their voices. I started to think of all the things my mom used to tell me every day: Have a good day at school. I love you. Have a good night. I would have given anything to hear her at that moment.

Every morning she used to sing at the top of her lungs, "Oh what a beautiful morning ..."

I used to hate it.

What would I have given to hear her voice again!

Over the first few weeks of captivity, I forced myself to think of things like that. I remember sitting in the heat of the summer, the sun baking on my back, forcing myself to think of my mom's voice, her laugh. How beautiful she looked in her black skirt and gold top. The shape and the color of her eyes.

But there were other feelings too. And though it might be hard to understand, a few of them were good, for they show the things you cling to when everything is gone.

I remember the pure rush of gratitude for any time that I could sleep. The realization that I would live another day! Relief when the sun went down and the heat gave way to the cool of the night. Gratefulness for food or water. A few minutes when I might be left alone. The ability to slip into a state of pure survival, a state of blankness, a quiet and painless place where I could shut the world down.

Looking back, I realized that at one point, early on the morning of the first day, something had changed inside me. After I had been raped and brutalized, there was something new inside my soul. There was a burning now inside me, a fierce determination that no matter what I had to do, I was going to live!

This determination was the only thing that gave me any hope—the realization that as long as I could survive one more day or one more hour, I might find a way to get back home.

I also discovered something that is harder to imagine, and much more difficult to explain.

Sometime during the first couple of days, I realized that I wasn't alone. There were others there beside me, unseen but not unfelt. Sometimes I could picture them beside me, reaching for my hand.

And that is one of the reasons I am still alive.

* * *

When I think back on those dark days of my capture, I realize my story didn't start on the night that Brian David Mitchell slipped into my bedroom and held a knife at my throat. In an odd way, my story began a few days before. Sunday afternoon. In my home. Just a few days before my world was torn apart.

Over time, I have gained an enormous appreciation for what I experienced on that Sunday. It has helped me to keep perspective. It helped to give me hope. And it helped me understand a little better why things might have happened the way they did.

CHAPTER 2

Sunday School


Two days before I was taken, I was sitting in my Sunday school class, surrounded by a group of other fourteen- and fifteen-year-olds. There were maybe seven or eight of us, a mix of boys and girls. Some of the kids were listening, but not everyone, for we were teenagers, you know. Looking around me, I was comfortable, for these kids were my friends. I had grown up with them, gone to school with them, eaten snacks at their houses, giggled with them on the playground. We knew one another well.

Though there was some horseplay among the class, for the most part I was quiet. I don't know if I was shy, but I guess I was. I just didn't feel a need to stand out. It surprises some people when I tell them that. Most of them picture me as an outgoing teenager. A cheerleader type, I think. But I wasn't. I was kind of quiet. A very obedient child. A 4.0 student. I played the harp, for heaven's sake! How un-cheerleader is that!

Some people say I'm pretty. Blond hair. Blue eyes. But I promise, I've never thought of myself that way. As a fourteen-year-old girl sitting in my Sunday school class, I certainly didn't think of myself as beautiful. Honestly, I don't think I ever thought about it at all. Some of the girls I knew were boy-crazy, but I never thought about those kinds of things. I didn't wear makeup. I had never had a boyfriend. The thought had never even crossed my mind. My favorite things were talking to my mom and jumping on the trampoline with my best friend, Elizabeth Calder. We just liked to have fun together. But our idea of fun wasn't chasing boys, or prank calling other kids in our class. In almost every way, I was still a little girl.

And one thing that I can say for certain is that I didn't understand the world.

I remember pressing my white cotton dress—printed tulips with light-green edging—with my hands while listening to my teacher. To most of us kids, he seemed to be about a hundred years old, with his gray beard and white hair. But we liked him. I felt he cared about us, even if we didn't listen to him all the time.

That morning, my teacher said something that hit me in a way that few things ever had before.

"If you will pray to do what God wants you to do, He will change your life," he said.

I pressed my dress again, my head down. I was listening carefully to him now. I don't know what it was, but there was something in the way he said it, the intensity of his voice, that made me realize that what he was saying was important.

"If you will lose your life in the service of God, He will direct you. He will help you. So I challenge you to do that. Commit to the Heavenly Father, and He will guide your way."

But what can I do to serve God? I asked myself. I'm just a little girl. I don't know anything. I can't do anything. What path could He even guide me on?

I didn't know the answers to these questions. But I felt that, whatever it might be, I had to do what my teacher had challenged me to do.

Later on that day, I went to the bedroom I shared with my little sister, Mary Katherine, and shut the door. I went into the bathroom and locked it. On the other side of the bathroom was a walk-in closet. I went into the closet and shut that door too. I have three younger brothers, a younger sister, and one brother who is a year and a half older than me. With six kids, our house was always chaotic. Full of life and voices. But there, in the closet, I was as alone as anyone could be in a home with eight people.

Kneeling down, I closed my eyes.

I didn't know how to say it, but I did the best I could. "God, I'm here," I said. "I'm only fourteen. I know I'm just a little girl. But I'll do whatever it is that you want me to do. I really do want to serve you. But I'm not sure that I know how."

I waited a moment. Maybe I was waiting for something to happen. A vision. A revelation. Some kind of sign from God.

But nothing happened.

So I got up and didn't think about it again.

At least not until two days later, when Brian David Mitchell took me from my house and forced me to start climbing up the mountain in the middle of the night.

Struggling up the side of the hill, breathless and terrified, a bearded man behind me and a long knife to my back, with scratched arms and my silky red pajamas clinging to my legs, I couldn't help but wonder, God, is this what you had in mind?

I was so confused and so afraid.

I don't understand! I did what you have asked me! This can't be what you wanted!

And it certainly wasn't. I know that now. Being taken captive was not part of some great, eternal plan.

But the confusion was overwhelming. My mind tumbled in sheer terror: This doesn't make any sense! I've never done anything wrong!

And though it would take a while, the answers to my confusion eventually settled in my mind.

I don't think what happened to me was something that God intended. He surely would not have wished the anguish and torment that I was about to go through upon anyone, especially upon a child.

But since that time, I have learned an important lesson. Yes, God can make some good come from evil. But even He, in all His majesty, won't make the evil go away. Men are free. He won't control them. There is wickedness in this world.

Which left me with this: When faced with pain and evil, we have to make a choice.

We can choose to be taken by the evil.

Or we can try to embrace the good.

CHAPTER 3

Brian David Mitchell


Brian David Mitchell began his journey to my bedroom many years before he actually found himself standing beside my bed in the middle of the night.

Indeed, the evil that grew inside him was planted very early in his life.

But before I go any further, I'd like to make it very clear that Brian David Mitchell's life isn't something that I want to understand. It's not something I have studied, or spent even a moment trying to figure out. Knowing him and his background is like learning about the devil. But I wasn't given any choice. I had been thrust into his life. Because of the situation in which I found myself—the abduction and then the seven-year trial—I have been forced to come to know him in ways that no else could.

I know about his teenage conviction for pedophilia after exposing himself to a child. I know about his three marriages. The thirteen children and stepchildren. More charges of child abuse. I know about his various stages of activity in his church, just enough to help him get the vernacular and religious customs down. More charges of abuse from his stepchildren. Threats of violence against his family. An urgent marriage to Wanda Barzee on the very day that the divorce from his second wife had been finalized. Barzee giving up all parental rights to her six children in order that they could marry. The growing realization that religion could be used to get what he wanted, whether from Barzee or someone else. The transition from a relatively quiet man to a controlling and abusive husband. Twisted relationships with other women, including invitations for them to become polygamous wives. An intense and sudden interest in Satan. Barzee feeling rejected because of his constant invitations to other women. A sudden surge of religious revelations that told him that he was chosen. Barzee accepting his lustful eye. The emergence of the Davidic king. Separation from, and then the eventual severing of his relationship with, other members of his family. His own mother having a restraining order placed against him. Drugs and alcohol and pornography. The prophet Immanuel taking to the city streets. No more jobs. No more money. He and Barzee hitchhiking across the country with nothing but what they had in their backpacks. The writing of the Book of Immanuel David Isaiah (a compilation of Mitchell's spiritual revelations). The decision to take me and make me his second wife.

These are the defining moments of Brian David Mitchell's life.

For me to have to wander through this web of darkness is very difficult. And to crawl inside his head can be terrifying, for it is a closed and evil place.

But again, I had to understand him. I wasn't given any choice.

It's also important to realize that understanding Brian David Mitchell is made very difficult by the fact that he is a master manipulator.

To this day, he will rant and rave in gibberish, then suddenly pull into himself, holding his cards very close to the chest. It's as if he's always evaluating his next move, weighing the odds, trying to figure out the best way to control the situation. Even when he isn't ranting, meaningful conversation is utterly impossible unless you are a prison guard or someone else who can give him something that he wants. He is selfish and angry. But he's also very smart, far more intelligent than most want to give him credit for. That is important to remember. This is not a foolish man. Some say that he is brilliant. Indeed, this proved to be part of his power, the ability to appear harmless and unassuming, even while he was plotting and demeaning and raging inside.

Throughout the ensuing investigation, his family has cast very little light upon my capture, perhaps partly because they don't want to talk, and perhaps mostly because they simply don't understand him. He's had very few friends, and those few people he was ever close to were forced to abandon him as they realized what a wicked man he was.

But though he has always refused to talk to the authorities, and his background is depressingly convoluted, Brian David Mitchell has not hidden everything beneath his deceptions and his lies.

Indeed, the trial of Brian David Mitchell for my kidnapping and criminal sexual assault left few stones unturned. Though I would happily have withdrawn myself from the process, I couldn't, for I was the central figure in the case, the most important witness, the reason for it all. Everything that was said or done during the trial had to be focused to some extent on me.

But I also understand that thousands of hours have gone into building the prosecutor's case. Dozens of investigators, police officers, attorneys, doctors, judges, psychiatrists, mental-health officers, criminal forensic specialists, jurists, and advocates helped to pull the various pieces together, each of them having a bit of the story to tell.

Press reports provide thousands of pages of additional information. Indeed—and I say this with very mixed emotions—few stories have so captured the nation's attention as did my case, the abduction and trial being covered extensively among the local, national, and international press.

But while these sources may be helpful in understanding Brian David Mitchell, the real story can only be told by those of us who were there.

Mitchell's wife, Wanda Barzee, is one of those. And she wasn't an innocent bystander. She is a wounded and evil woman—a mother who once secretly fed her daughter her own pet rabbit, watching her eat it with a smile—who must accept her share of the blame. But at least she has been somewhat willing to discuss the events that took place.

Of course, there is also Brian David Mitchell. But once he was finally captured, he went from incessant talking to not speaking at all.

Which leaves the keys to the story lying in my hands.

I am the one who lived through nine months of hell. I am the one who was forced to lie beside Mitchell every night. I am the one who had to listen to his stories, including long and wandering tales that revealed some of the most intimate details of his life. I am the one who felt his hot breath on my face, hiked with him atop the mountain, washed with him, ate and napped with him, hid behind Dumpsters and in the mountains with him, hitchhiked and rode on a cross-country bus with him. I am the one who was forced to watch things between Barzee and him that no one should ever be forced to see. I am the one who witnessed Mitchell turn away Barzee's jealous rage with nothing but a soft word about his weaknesses and a blessing upon her head. I am the one who had to listen to his incessant talking, sometimes interrupted only long enough that he could rape me before going back to sharing his insights once again. I am the one who saw him play other people like a fiddle, watched him deal with police and investigators—people who were trained to spot deception—as if they were nothing but children in a game of hide-and-seek. I saw his calm. I saw his cool. I saw him constantly pull the wool over other people's eyes.


(Continues...)

Excerpted from My Story by Elizabeth Smart, Chris Stewart. Copyright © 2013 Elizabeth Smart. Excerpted by permission of St. Martin's Press.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

Table of Contents

Contents

Title Page,
Copyright Notice,
Dedication,
Acknowledgments,
Epigraph,
Prologue,
1. Elizabeth,
2. Sunday School,
3. Brian David Mitchell,
4. Dark Night,
5. Taken,
6. Mary Katherine,
7. Morning Light,
8. Rape of a Child,
9. Broken,
10. Tender Mercies,
11. Family,
12. Without Me,
13. A Nice Girl,
14. Adam and Eve,
15. The Voice,
16. Wind and Noise,
17. Tracks in the Mud,
18. Food and Wine,
19. Routine,
20. Cold Water,
21. Happy Fourth of July,
22. Betrayal,
23. Barzee Takes Off,
24. Party in the City,
25. Too Scared to Speak,
26. California Dreaming,
27. Fire Swamp,
28. Thanksgiving,
29. Another Girl,
30. Throw Away My Christmas,
31. Waiting for Disaster,
32. High Camp and Hustler,
33. Hunger,
34. Manipulating Mitchell,
35. A Walk Through the Desert,
36. I Am Elizabeth,
37. Mom and Dad,
38. Comfort in My Bed,
39. Trial,
40. Gratitude and Faith,
Epilogue,
About the Author,
Copyright,

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