Elizabeth Smart

Apr 30, 2017
4 min read

After the flickering lights of the streetlamps lining the sidewalks of the Smart’s Salt Lake City home lit the night-darkened pavement, and the pink dappled sun had dipped low behind the face of the mountains, each member of the typical modern Utah family drifted peacefully into sleep with dreams of summer. Neither Ed nor Lois Smart could possibly imagine that one of their six children would be stolen from their beds and dragged into nine long months of horrific sexual slavery, but that is exactly what happened. On June 5, 2002, every parent’s worst nightmare became the living reality of the Smart family, as their fourteen-year-old daughter Elizabeth Smart had been abducted from her bed by a knifed assailant who would be later identified as Brian Mitchell. During the time that Smart was held captive, Mitchell repeatedly raped and starved her, all the while trying to convince her that he was a prophet called “Immanuel,” until finally a break in the case was made on March 12, 2003, when Mitchell was recognized by a civilian. Smart was at last able to be returned safely to her family.

While Elizabeth Smart was returned to her family and her life of music and athleticism that she knew before this travesty, it would take many years for her to overcome the trauma she experienced and gain the ability to speak out on the ways that her religious upbringing kept her silent in the aftermath of brutal rape. Purity culture has often been named as a leading contributor to rape culture in our nation, which is unsurprising as sexual acts outside of marriage are considered sinful and indecent in the eyes of the average church-goer. Now, twenty-nine years old, Elizabeth Smart is a married woman with two children of her own and is an outspoken advocate for sexual assault survivors everywhere. She has also helped to write a survivor’s guide for the U.S Department of Justice entitled You’re Not Alone: The Journey From Abduction to Empowerment for those who have survived abduction and assault, as well as authoring her own book, My Story, on her experience, and lobbying for legislation that would protect children and sexual assault survivors.

While the idea of living in a culture that normalizes sexual assault is a foreign idea dismissed as a feminist night terror, those that do acknowledge its wrongfully powerful place in our society strongly agree that purity culture is a driving influence in keeping rape survivors silent about their traumatic ordeals. The No Shame Movement defines purity culture as “the view of any discussion of things of a sexual nature outside of the context of heterosexual marriage as taboo” and Elizabeth Smart, while still devout in her Mormon faith, agrees that the way sex and abstinence is talked about contributes to our cultural problem. In an interview with Molly Oswaks of Broadly, Smart says “The way we talk about [sex and abstinence] needs to change. People need to realize that there is nothing that can detract from your worth. When it comes to rape and sexual violence and abuse, that can never detract from who you are.” Smart’s stance on the subject is clear, but what is more clear is what she doesn’t say. The implied message is that the current discussion surrounding sex and abstinence in our society hammers in the idea that your worth, especially as a woman, is directly tied to your sexuality, leaving many survivors of sexual assault in a shocked state of shame wondering if they will ever be able to be of value to anyone ever again.

In the fall of 2016, the media was a buzz again about purity culture, this time after two BYU students were punished for violating the religious school’s honor code after reporting their rapes to local authorities. These high-profile cases, brought several other victims out of the wood works who had been too afraid to seek help due to the shame and fear of backlash from the religious institution. Picketers and peaceful protestors marched onto BYU’s campus to deliver a message to the president of the university asking him to give amnesty to survivors of sexual assault, dragging to light a topic most controversial and hidden from the puritanical eye. Elizabeth Smart joined this movement to help these women share their stories and give them a platform from which to declare their inherent worth despite their attacks and the unnecessary consequences created by a culture of the strictest purity. Per an article written by The Daily Mail, upon hearing the stories, Elizabeth Smart said she was reminded of “what I felt and what I went through”. While Elizabeth Smart maintains a high level of moral values through her Mormon faith, where she disagrees with the common practice of the religion, is in how abstinence and sexual purity are taught. It is her belief that these teaching methods, and the strict enforcement of the BYU honor code, perpetuate a purity culture that feeds directly into rape culture wherein sexual assailants do not bear the full brunt of responsibility for their actions. When victims are punished, even in the slightest, for coming forward about their assaults, it sends a direct message that victims are the root cause of an attack and perpetrators are not fully responsible.

While that warm summer evening in June of 2002 served to mark the beginning of Elizabeth Smart’s personal journey through a traumatic nightmare of sexual humiliation and painful internal degradation in the wake of violent assault inflicted on her, it also served to give her the most difficult of experiences that would help her to become a successful advocate against purity culture and give her the strength to help others from the darkness of being abducted and victimized. Smart’s resilience is showcased in a quote from her book My Story, “But the human spirit is resilient. God made us so. He gave us the ability to forgive. To leave our past behind. To look forward instead of back.” To look forward instead of back indeed is Elizabeth Smart’s legacy as she works to provide this opportunity for others, helping to pave the way from victim to survivor.