Elizabeth Smart Recounts Her Kidnapping (9 months as a plural wife)
Cults to Consciousness
Shelise Ann Sola, Jonathan C Rosales
4.8 • 570 Ratings
🗓️ 30 March 2026
⏱️ 77 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
In 2002, 14-year-old Elizabeth Smart was kidnapped at knifepoint from her bedroom in Salt Lake City by Brian David Mitchell and his accomplice, Wanda Barzee. She was held captive for nine months, survived repeated SA, and was forced to live in camps across Utah while being disguised in public. In 2003, she was finally recognized by alert bystanders and rescued, leading to the arrest and conviction of her captors.
Today, Elizabeth Smart is a survivor, author, and chiId safety activist. She founded the Elizabeth Smart Foundation, which focuses on preventing chiId abuse, supporting victims, and promoting recovery. She also works as a public speaker, advocates for legislation to protect children, appears in media to raise awareness, and has written books including her most recent “Detours”. She is married, has children, and continues to be a prominent voice for survivor empowerment and child safety.
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Elizabeth’s book: Detours
Find Elizabeth on social media!
IG: https://www.instagram.com/elizabeth_smart_official
Website: https://www.elizabethsmart.com/
Foundation: elizabethsmartfoundation.org
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | He honestly did not look creepy, he did not look scary, he just looked like someone who was down on his luck. And when he approached my mom, he didn't even ask for money. He just asked for work. He asked if she had any kind of work he could do. That was it. That was all the interaction that she had. And I just happened to be standing there next to her when he saw me. That was when he decided that I was going to be the one he was going to kidnap. |
| 0:23.6 | If you look deeper than just like the overall story arc of what happened to me, |
| 0:28.6 | like kidnapped out of my bedroom at knife point, held to captive for nine months, |
| 0:32.1 | re-debues, eventually rescued, and you get more into the nitty gritty kind of like we are right now. I feel like |
| 0:38.7 | it's a, call it a cautionary tell, but it's a perfect example of how dangerous religion can be. |
| 0:47.4 | Maybe one of the worst evils a person can commit is taking something that is supposed to bring |
| 0:52.1 | joy and comfort and peace and twisting it into something dark to serve a person's own ends. |
| 0:59.2 | We're all born with value that no one else can take away, no matter what's happened to us. |
| 1:05.1 | What have I been doing? |
| 1:08.2 | Lay down my autonomy. |
| 1:11.6 | After that, it got very dark very quickly. Hey guys, my name is Shalise Anzola and this is Colts to Consciousness, where we discuss |
| 1:23.6 | leaving high demand religions or organizations and finding healing and independence |
| 1:28.2 | through awareness and true individual sovereignty. If you're only tuning in on those podcast platforms |
| 1:33.0 | and you'd prefer to see our faces go to YouTube instead at Colts to Consciousness. |
| 1:37.3 | It means the world to us when you can interact with the post. It really is the best way to support |
| 1:40.9 | the show and our guests who are bravely coming on, sharing their stories. They are real people. And it means so much when you can leave those words of encouragement |
| 1:48.5 | down below in the comments for them. Today's guest, you probably already know who she is. |
| 1:54.6 | Her case was one of the most notorious kidnapping cases in all of American history in 2002, |
| 1:59.9 | abducted from her home when she was 14 years old in Salt Lake City, found nine months later. |
| 2:06.0 | And today we're going to get into the details of what happened to her, why her abductors did what they did, trying to secure her as a plural wife, including trying to get six other young girls, to be a part of this religion |
| 2:19.2 | that he created himself, how she was able to be found and how she is doing today. Being an advocate, |
| 2:24.7 | a survivor, writing books. I just read her latest book, Detours. It was fantastic. And you may have |
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