A child rape victim who suffered a horrific nine-month campaign of sexual abuse at the hands of her demented kidnapper has told how she contemplated killing herself.
Elizabeth Smart was just 14 when she was snatched from her home in Salt Lake City, Utah, by porn-obsessed rapist Brian David Mitchell, 57, who held her in a remote spot in the woods in 2002.
Now 29, Smart, who is a married mother-of-two, recalled how she was repeatedly beaten and raped over a nine-month period and was forced to watch sexually explicit films.
In set to air Tuesday, she said: “For me, because I grew up in a very conservative Christian neighborhood, the first time I was raped I remember feeling devastated.”
“I felt like it would be better to be dead than to continue living being a rape victim, being a rape survivor. I felt in that moment if there had been an easy way out, I probably would have taken it.”
Smart’s horrific ordeal came to end when a biker alerted police after spotting Mitchell traveling with two people in Utah.
Speaking about her ordeal, she said: “One second I was being reunited with my parents, the next second I was being questioned. The next second they take me up to the hospital … then they’re like, ‘Oh, take off your clothes. Oh, let’s do this kit on you.'”
“Nobody was really telling me anything and I remember when they were doing the rape kit, I just remember thinking, ‘What’s going on?'”
Mitchell is serving a life sentence for the abuse.
His deranged wife Wanda Barzee, who helped her husband, was sentenced to 15 years for aggravated kidnapping.
The pair were both initially ruled unfit to go on trial because of their mental health.
At the time, Mitchell’s defense team argued he was not guilty by reason of insanity.
Last year, Smart said she believed porn fueled her attacker’s depraved treatment of her.
In a video released by anti-pornography group Fight The New Drug, she said: “All I know is that pornography made my living hell worse.”
“It just led to him raping me more, more than he already did, which was a lot.”
“Looking at pornography wasn’t enough for him.”
“Having sex with his wife after looking at pornography, it wasn’t enough for him.”
“And then it led him to finally going out and kidnapping me.”
“He just always wanted more.”
“I can’t say that he would not have gone out and kidnapped me had he not looked at pornography.”