Jeffrey Caplan
Elizabeth Smart says she contemplated suicide after she was raped while being held captive. Smart made the revelation in a sit-down interview for Crime Watch Daily with fellow sexual assault survivor and survivor advocate Daisy Coleman.
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“For me, because I grew up in a very conservative Christian neighborhood, the first time I was raped I remember feeling devastated,” Smart said. “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 is now 29, married and a mother of two. She was raped multiple times by Brian David Mitchell after he broke into the family’s home in 2002 and kidnapped her when she was 14 years old. Mitchell is serving a life sentence, and his wife Wanda Barzee is also serving time for her role in holding Smart captive.
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During the interview, she also spoke of feeling confused after she was eventually rescued and reunited with her family but immediately went through a battery of medical examinations and tests.
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“Nobody told me what was going on. 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,'” Smart said.
“Nobody was really telling me anything, and I remember when they were doing the rape kit, I just remember thinking, ‘What’s going on?'”
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