Elizabeth Smart’s living nightmare began on the night of June 5, 2002 in an upscale neighborhood in Salt Lake City, Utah, when a bearded man cut the screen of an open window in her home, snuck into her bedroom, put a knife to her throat, and dragged the 14-year-old girl into the night.
Elizabeth was taken into the mountains, eventually arriving at a crude campsite hidden away just three miles from her house–close enough that she could actually hear family members yelling her name the next day. The man’s wife was waiting at the campsite, and forced Elizabeth to change into robes, after which she was told to wait inside the makeshift tent. The man then declared the young girl his new wife, raped her, and then tied a metal cord around her ankle so she could not escape. In her New York Times best-selling book, My Story, she wrote:
“Over the next nine months, Brian David Mitchell would rape me every day, sometimes multiple times a day, he would torture and brutalize me in ways that are impossible to imagine, starve and manipulate me, like I was an animal.”
Nine months after being captured, Elizabeth was spotted in public with a strange looking man and woman in a suburb of Salt Lake City, dressed in a wig with a veil covering her face. After multiple witnesses reported sightings of the girl they had seen all over national television—including America’s Most Wanted—the police ended up rescuing Elizabeth Smart and arresting her captors.
Despite a lengthy trial in which the man tried to convince jurors he was mentally insane, he would eventually be sentenced to life in prison.
In this exclusive interview, Fight the New Drug sat down with Elizabeth Smart, where she spoke in-depth for the first time about the role pornography played in one of the most recognized child abduction cases of the century.
Her powerful story shines further light on the negative effects of pornography, how it has the potential to twist the mind of the consumer, and how it can escalate to more extreme material and behavior.
Click here to see more research that shows the harmful effects of pornography on Truth About Porn, our growing research catalog site.
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Most kids today are exposed to porn by the age of 12. By the time they’re teenagers, 75% of boys and 70% of girls have already viewed itRobb, M.B., & Mann, S. (2023). Teens and pornography. San Francisco, CA: Common Sense.Copy —often before they’ve had a single healthy conversation about it.
Even more concerning: over half of boys and nearly 40% of girls believe porn is a realistic depiction of sexMartellozzo, E., Monaghan, A., Adler, J. R., Davidson, J., Leyva, R., & Horvath, M. A. H. (2016). “I wasn’t sure it was normal to watch it”: A quantitative and qualitative examination of the impact of online pornography on the values, attitudes, beliefs and behaviours of children and young people. Middlesex University, NSPCC, & Office of the Children’s Commissioner.Copy . And among teens who have seen porn, more than 79% of teens use it to learn how to have sexRobb, M.B., & Mann, S. (2023). Teens and pornography. San Francisco, CA: Common Sense.Copy . That means millions of young people are getting sex ed from violent, degrading content, which becomes their baseline understanding of intimacy. Out of the most popular porn, 33%-88% of videos contain physical aggression and nonconsensual violence-related themesFritz, N., Malic, V., Paul, B., & Zhou, Y. (2020). A descriptive analysis of the types, targets, and relative frequency of aggression in mainstream pornography. Archives of Sexual Behavior, 49(8), 3041-3053. doi:10.1007/s10508-020-01773-0Copy Bridges et al., 2010, “Aggression and Sexual Behavior in Best-Selling Pornography Videos: A Content Analysis,” Violence Against Women.Copy .
From increasing rates of loneliness, depression, and self-doubt, to distorted views of sex, reduced relationship satisfaction, and riskier sexual behavior among teens, porn is impacting individuals, relationships, and society worldwideFight the New Drug. (2024, May). Get the Facts (Series of web articles). Fight the New Drug.Copy .
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