Elizabeth Smart helping kids fight back
BY GANNETT NEWS SERVICE January 23, 2012 10:26PM
SALT LAKE CITY - OCTOBER 01: (EDITORS NOTE: Retransmission with alternate crop.) Elizabeth Smart leaves the Federal Court House after testifying for the first time in a competency hearing for her kidnapper Brian David Mitchell on October 1, 2009 in Salt Lake City, Utah. Smart was kidnapped in 2002 by Mitchell, held for captive for nine months and reunited then with her family on March 12, 2003 after police received tips from a store miles from her home (Photo by George Frey/Getty Images) R:\Merlin\Getty_Photos\GYI0058529533.jpg
Updated: February 25, 2012 8:21AM
Elizabeth Smart, who was kidnapped from her Utah home at age 14 in 2002 and held captive for nine months by a man who repeatedly raped her, has started a foundation to teach kids how to fight back in the case of an abduction.
Now a 24-year-old Brigham Young University senior studying harp, Smart said her Resist Aggression Defensively “gives children choices and options,” she said.
“I can’t go back and change what happened to me, but I would like to think that if someone tried to kidnap me now, I would know enough to know I can fight back. I can yell,” she said. The program also teaches how kids can try to talk their way out of situations.
Smart said her kidnapping “taught me that just because something bad happens, it doesn’t mean our life is over.
Gannett News Service
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