‘Holding onto hope’
Ed Smart shares experience of daughter’s abduction, praises centers like Amberly’s Place
In 2002, 14-year-old Elizabeth Smart was abducted from her family’s home in Salt Lake City, Utah, and sexually abused by her captors for nine months until she was rescued by police.
Saturday’s “Dream Gala” presented by Amberly’s Place brought Smart’s father, Ed Smart, to Yuma. Prior to the event and his speech “Through the Lens of a Father: Holding onto Hope,” the keynote speaker shared how the Smart family navigated their nine- month search for their daughter.
“As a father, you want to be prepared,” Smart said. “You’d love to have this bubble to protect your child from anything that can happen out there. But I wasn’t prepared. I felt like it was my responsibility to find Elizabeth. As a father, I’m the protector – how could this have happened on my watch?”
Silence was never an option for Smart at any point in the process. He has since become an activist alongside his daughter, who founded the Elizabeth
Smart Foundation to prevent crimes against children as well as provide resources and empowerment to survivors and their families. Together, they are using their experience to advocate for others who’ve endured the same trial.
“Having someone break into your house and take your daughter at knife point just doesn’t seem like a possibility,” Smart said. “That’s why, when Elizabeth
came home, I felt such a responsibility to try to help other families and support facilities such as Amberly’s Place. You can’t know everything, and you can’t be prepared for all of the things that are out there.”
According to Smart, having advocacy centers like Amberly’s Place to help families navigate the aftermath of a child’s disappearance is “so critical.”
“I didn’t know what to do,” Smart said. “I didn’t know what (resources) were available. That’s one of the beauties of having a facility such as Amberly’s Place – you have an advocate to help you understand the process, find out what the next steps are and what things you can do (in the meantime) to have a good outcome, if that’s possible.”
It isn’t uncommon for
family members to be questioned as if they were the perpetrator in the initial stages of an investigation; for families who may be experiencing this presently, Smart used his own experience to offer counsel.
“We knew it wasn’t one of us, but law enforcement didn’t know that (initially])” Smart said. “Getting past that point is really critical and all parents need to understand that they’re going to be looked at as the first point of possibility because it happens so much within the family.”
Though at times the prospect of finding their daughter and bringing her home safe-and-sound may have seemed bleak, Smart said he never loosened his grasp on hope.
“I had some direct impressions that she was still out there, and we couldn’t give up,” Smart said. “There were times where you wanted it to be over, because the not knowing is worse than anything. In abduction cases, if it’s non-familial, the chances become very slim that they’re going to be found. The first 24 hours are critical – if they’re still alive after that, then there’s a bigger chance that they’ll be kept alive.”
To families searching for their own children, Smart gives this message: “As far as I’m concerned, until you have evidence to (prove)the contrary, being positive and trying to keep the child’s face out there is critical in finding them.”