COMING TO TERMS
Why Elizabeth Smart is narrating a movie about her abduction
THE Elizabeth Smart story is one of the most famous abduction cases in recent American history, dominating news cycles in 2002 and 2003. Unlike more than half of other kidnappings, this one ended happily — when, after nine harrowing months of captivity, Smart returned home.
Lifetime’s movie “I Am Elizabeth Smart,” airing Nov. 18, marks the event’s 15th anniversary. [Sister network A&E is also releasing “Elizabeth Smart Autobiography,” a two-part documentary airing Nov. 12 and 13.]
“They said, ‘We need you there. We want you to be a part of it,’” says Smart, 30, one of the movie’s producers. Over the years, she says she’s been approached by numerous producers seeking to dramatize her story, and was initially reluctant about “I Am Elizabeth Smart.”
“But as I continued on in my own advocacy work, I felt like this [movie] might actually be a good thing for me to do,” she says. “The truth is, kidnapping is not that uncommon. Sexual violence is not that uncommon. I feel that by sharing my story on this kind of scale and in this kind of format, it would reach other people who are going through similar things, encourage them to keep going and hopefully help them to feel like they can speak up about their story, too.”
Smart, played by Alana Boden, was 14 when she was abducted by fanatical drifter Brian David Mitchell, who took her captive as his “second wife.” The movie covers Smart’s abuse at the hands of Mitchell (Skeet Ulrich) and wife Wanda Barzee (Deirdre Lovejoy). Between scenes, Smart narrates directly into the camera. Her story garnered outsize media attention in part because of the shocking nature in which Smart was taken captive — at knifepoint from the safety of her own home. “I can’t think of a more innocent circumstance,” she says of her kidnapping and rape. “And yet it still happened to me. Honestly, no victim should ever be asked, ‘Well, how did that happen? What were you doing that led to that circumstance?’ No victim deserves what happened to them. It doesn’t matter what the circumstances are; rape can be something that can haunt you and destroy the rest of your life. That’s why it’s so important for us to talk about it.”
In the ensuing years, Smart has written a book, given interviews and a TED talk, appeared before Congress to support legislation against sexual predators and has become a child safety activist. In 2011, she founded The Elizabeth Smart Foundation, which empowers and protects children and victims of abuse. Although she has told her story in numerous ways, she describes the experience of telling it on film as “terrifying ... you don’t know how people are going to react. The first day that I was kidnapped, the first time that I was raped — I remember feeling like I would be better off being dead, because I would never have to feel these feelings of pain, of shame, of embarrassment ever again.
“I know that that’s a common feeling for all survivors,” she says. “I’m hoping that for people who haven’t experienced those kinds of things ... as they watch [the movie] it will give them a greater compassion.
“Today, we’re seeing more survivors coming forward. That’s the only way that we can change the culture.”