Posted on 05/10/2013 8:17:31 PM PDT by Morgana
Elizabeth SmartIn 2002, the kidnapping of 14-year-old Elizabeth Smart captured the nation’s attention. Rescued nine months later, Smart had been held prisoner and raped by Brian David Mitchell, who is currently serving a richly-deserved life sentence. Today, Smart is a 25-year-old author, advocate for child-protection laws, and missing persons commentator for ABC News.
Last Wednesday, Smart spoke at a Johns Hopkins University forum on human trafficking. She discussed her mindset while in captivity, the following excerpt of which has been picked up by numerous liberal commentators:
I remember in school one time, I had a teacher who was talking about, well, about abstinence, and she said, “imagine that you’re a stick of gum, and when you engage in sex, that’s like getting chewed, and if you do that lots of times, you’re gonna become an old piece of gum! And who’s going to want you after that?” Well, that’s terrible, but nobody should ever say that, but for me, I felt, oh my gosh, I’m that chewed-up piece of gum! Nobody re-chews a piece of gum. You throw it away. And that’s how easy it is to feel you no longer have worth, you no longer have value. Why would it even be worth screaming out, why would it even make a difference if you are rescued, your life still has no value.
Slate, the Huffington Post, Gawker, ThinkProgress, and MSNBC all have pieces up with headlines depicting Smart as saying abstinence education itself made her feel worthless and demoralized her away from trying to escape earlier. Liberals have a long, ghoulish record of hijacking victims to shame their enemies and emotionally blackmail people into adopting their policies, and this case is especially egregious because the victim in question said no such thing.
Certainly, Smart says the remarks of one particular teacher, whose “who’s going to want you?” dismissal to teenage girls seems lacking in Christian compassion, played a role. But while I do not presume to know her views on the general subject, Smart’s speech does not blame abstinence education itself, or the general principle of abstinence.
A bit earlier, she mentions being “raised in a very religious household, one was taught that sex was something special that only happened between a husband and a wife who loved each other,” which she was “determined to follow.” And near the beginning of her speech, she makes clear that, also while in captivity, she realized that her parents’ strong belief in abstinence wouldn’t make them value her any less:
I remember on that first day of being kidnapped and raped, I remember thinking of my parents, and after realizing that they would still love me, that just because I’d been chained, just because I’d been kidnapped, just because all these things had happened to me, that wouldn’t change their love.
Why would they? Generally, Christians are far more understanding toward those who fall for sexual temptation than we’re given credit for, but here we needn’t even go that far. Being raped is not giving in to temptation. It’s not consensual sex. It’s not promiscuity. It’s not you making light of the sacred or wasting God’s gifts. Rape is a foul, violent crime for which the victim bears no fault, and the only “Christians” who think otherwise either reside in some isolated fringe of no practical significance or exist within liberals’ slanderous imaginations.
It’s true that rape can lead to all sorts of doubts about one’s sexuality and self-worth, and it’s not implausible that those effects could be heightened for people with a religious attachment to their virginity. But it’s preposterous to suggest that valuing your virginity and wanting to save yourself for one special person are therefore intrinsically destructive beliefs, and it’s a stretch to suggest that the phenomenon is unique among conservatively religious victims – feelings of guilt and lost self-esteem are commonly reported reactions, and are routinely cited as part of what makes rape such a horrible thing to do to anyone, not just one particular subset.
Think of it this way: as disappointed as religious parents would be to learn their teenager has been sexually active, they’d be far more troubled to learn he or she had killed someone or stolen something. Does that mean they would look down on their child for shooting an attacker in self-defense, or stealing bread and water to save a starving person? No. The prospect is absurd for the same reason expecting them to think any less of a raped daughter would be absurd: having principles doesn’t mean we’re idiots who can’t understand the concept of facts and circumstances.
Well-intentioned and well-adjusted people do not stoop this low to demonize people and ideas they disagree with. Would it be too much to ask any of the abstinence critics in our audience what the real motive is?
Well, yes, I wouldn’t have a man like that around my daughters.
Still doesn’t make sense that the younger sister didn’t run to wake the parents the minute the guy was gone.
That I can’t understand. From all news accounts the sister was scared. Had it been me I would have been running in the house screaming with hysterics to get my parents. Now that I think of it, there are two of them in the room what if both of them had raised a raucous when they realized he was there? Nothing like two pre-teen or even teen girls shrieking to raise the dead, deafen the ears and break glass in most cases.
So one has to wonder why did they not scream?
Exactly my point. It was an elopement, not a kidnapping, and the younger sister was complicit.
Lib acquaintance posted this on FB. They’re overjoyed that she’s speaking against abstinence education. The fact is that she would have felt worthless simply due to the fact that this old bum made her into an object for his sexual perversion. Just because she was unable to save herself for marriage, through no fault of her own, doesn’t mean parents should not encourage abstinence in their children. Are we supposed to encourage early sex so in case a girl gets raped she won’t feel so bad? If her mother had put her on the pill at age 12 and encouraged sexual experimentation with her classmates, she still would have felt dirty after being raped by this bum. It’s not she who is dirty, it is what was done to her.
Even if it was an “elopement” in her eyes it’s still a kidnapping because she was only what? 14? Plus I still find it hard to believe she’d run off with that smelly bum. She must have been very desperate. I’ve know teen girls to do stupid things but this stupid? Plus how stupid was the sister that she went along with the plan? They were against their parents that much?
Have you read ”A High Wind in Jamaica”?
And yes, I know that legally it was a kidnapping, but she cooperated. He seduced her via religion - she thought.he was a saint.
Never heard of it. I see your point about the facts of this case though. I just can’t imagine how bad Liz’s life could be that she’d run off with a bum.
What do you know of her life before she left? Don’t just say “Nutty Mormons” that is too vague, besides I know a lot of “Nutty religious people”. I need details.
I HATE misinformation and
kabumpo is spreading it!
Her mother hired him.
Mary Katherine was only 7 years old and too scared to scream!!!
It was a kidnapping.
Sheeesh!
Now you are just dumber than a bag of hammers.
But the problem with your opinion is you and the rest of us don’t really have the true story. Just a lot of media opinions up until she spoke herself....and based on her experience, I am sure much is not talked about by her.
Start here, follow all the links, read all the linked articles, and come back to discuss this case in about twenty years.
The book is a classic. I recommend that you read it if you want to know about how not innocent children can be.
It doesn’t matter which foolish parent hired him.
It doesn’t make sense that the younger one was ”too scared to scream” for the next several hours.
>> I never believed that she was kidnapped.
Any willingness she had is irrelevant legally and psychologically.
What you think you’re framing as clinical objectivity is in reality naive conjecture — no rational psychiatrist/expert would present your point on a public forum without a battery of qualified scientific and medical references. In other words, give it up.
I read it, but it is very fuzzy on the details of the break-in and the abduction, doesn’t describe the house, that the bedroom was at least two if not three storeys up, that he used a ladder.
Doesn’t add up.
Amen! He has made us justified and worthy despite our failings. We are as Saints in His eyes. He IS!
Onyx I just can’t for the life of me figure out why those two did not scream. I have worked with girls that age at a summer camp. A boy comes in their group and boy (no pun intended) do they scream! With girls all it takes is for one to scream and they all join in the chorus. Trust me at age 7 then those two should have broke the sound barrier with their screams.
No, you didn't read it.
The Wikipedia write-up would tell you in the first few paragraphs, just like the initial news reports did, that Mitchell cut a screen downstairs, and entered the house through the window.
Abduction [edit] Edward and Lois Smart lived in the affluent neighborhood of Federal Heights in Salt Lake City, Utah, with their six children.[2] On the evening of June 4, 2002, the family attended an awards ceremony at Elizabeth's school. After the family returned home and got ready for bed, Ed made sure the doors were all locked, but he did not turn on the alarm. "If the children got up and moved [in the night], it would set the alarm off. And so we just said we're not going to bother with it," Lois later explained.[3]
In the early hours of the morning, Brian David Mitchell broke into the home and came to the bedroom that Elizabeth shared with her 9-year-old sister, Mary Katherine.[4] While Mary Katherine pretended to be asleep,[5] she watched the abduction,[6] and later gave these statements as to what happened:
A white man about the height of her brother Charles (5 ft 8 in)[7] about 30 or 40 years old, wearing light-colored clothes and a golf hat.[2][8] (He was actually wearing black, did not have a golf hat, and was 49.)[9]
He had dark hair, and also dark hair on his arms and on the back of his hands.[8]
The man threatened Elizabeth with a knife.[9]
When Elizabeth said "ouch" after stubbing her toe on a chair, Mitchell said something that sounded like: "You better be quiet, and I won't hurt you."[10]
She heard Elizabeth ask "Why are you doing this?" and though the answer was not clear, Mary Katherine thought the answer might have been "for ransom."[10][11]
Mitchell was soft-spoken — even polite, calm, and nicely dressed.[8]
Although Mitchell spoke to Elizabeth quietly, Mary Katherine thought Mitchell's voice seemed somehow familiar, but she couldn't pinpoint where or when she had heard it.[12]
She never got a good look at Mitchell's face.[13] This fact was kept a secret by the police during the investigation.[14]
By listening to the creaking floor as Elizabeth and Mitchell walked, Mary Katherine thought she could tell where Mitchell and Elizabeth were. So when it seemed safe, Mary Katherine hopped out of bed to tell her parents. But she froze in terror when she nearly ran into Mitchell and Elizabeth as they seemed to be looking into her brothers' bedroom.[15] Fearful that she had been spotted by the abductor, she crept back into her bed. "I thought, you know, be quiet, because if he hears you, he might take you too, and you're the only person who has seen this," Mary Katherine said in a later interview. "I was, like, shaking."[9] She hid for an undetermined amount of time. Investigators later concluded that she may have been hiding over two hours before she felt safe enough to come out.[16]
Just before 4 a.m., Mary Katherine came to her parents' bedroom and woke them up. She told them Elizabeth was gone, but her parents thought she was having a bad dream. Ed went from room to room, and didn't find her. Mary Katherine told him, "You're not going to find her. A man came and took her. He had a knife."[17] Still, the parents found this hard to believe until Lois spotted a screen window downstairs that had been cut with a knife.[18]
Planned Parenthood (and their sex education wing SIECUS), feminazis, and socialists are AGAINST abstinence NOT because “it doesn’t work”, but because it is counter to their hedonistic “sex positive” philosophy that sees orgasm as a birthright to be enjoyed by everyone at every age with no moral judgments regardless of sex, age, relation, marital status, number, or species of partner(s).
They pick and dig with a thousand arguments but like Stalinists, they don’t really believe their own BULLSTALIN, it’s pure Alinsky, JUST WIN THE ARGUMENT. Same with the “genetic component” of homosexuality. They flat out don’t give a damn “why” the desire is there, if it exists, ACT ON IT. Doesn’t matter if it’s your own brother, your neighbor’s spouse, etc. ACT ON IT. SMASH MONOGAMY. SMASH THE PATRIARCHY.
Understand the end game. Out a liberal today.
Yes, I did read it, now for the second time. It does not describe the abduction in sufficient detail, does not describe the house. I saw a news program about this at the time of the search for her that showed the house - it didn’t make sense - it was obvious to me that she had run away with him.
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