‘All I Knew About Sex Was What My Friend Told Me’

need to know

• Elizabeth Smart recounts the horror she endured for nine months in new Netflix documentary Kidnapped: Elizabeth Smart

• In the documentary, which aired on January 21, Smart recounted in brutal detail how she was raped four times a day by Brian David Mitchell, who walked her like a dog in a tree for long periods of time with a cable around her neck.

• The documentary is also joined by her family, witnesses and law enforcement officials who offer their own perspectives on Smart’s tragic story

After being abducted from her bedroom in the middle of the night, Elizabeth Smart stood in a shabby tent in the Utah foothills, unsure of what would happen next.

At around 1 a.m. on June 5, 2002, Smart, then 14, woke up to find a scary, bearded man standing next to her bed and ordering her to come with him.

The man, Brian David Mitchell, 48 at the time and calling himself a prophet, dragged the terrified teenager out the back door of her Salt Lake City home with a knife to her neck, into the backyard and into the rugged foothills to a deserted campsite.

In their tent at the campground, Mitchell’s wife, Wanda Barzee (who went by Hephzibah), then 56, told Smart to take off his pajamas and put on a loose robe.

Otherwise, the older woman explained, she would have had Mitchell come in and “rip your clothes off,” Smart says in the new Netflix documentary. Kidnapped: Elizabeth Smart, Premieres on January 21st.

Smart, 38, a happily married mother of three, has previously spoken out about her nightmarish ordeal. She has written several best-selling books about her experiences, founded the Elizabeth Smart Foundation to help end sexual violence, and used her platform as one of the most famous survivors of all time to advocate for others.

What’s different this time is that she’s telling her story alongside her 70-year-old father, Ed Smart, her 33-year-old sister, Mary Katherine Smart, witnesses who saw Smart wearing a niqab with her head covered but didn’t realize she was the missing girl authorities had been looking for, and the law enforcement officials working on the case.

Smart told People that having so many voices in the documentary “gives the story a lot more perspective.”

She hopes her honest account of the brutal treatment she endured, which included being raped four times a day, locked in a dark hole and chained for hours, will help others better understand the realities victims face during and after their assaults.

“I want other survivors to know that they are not alone and that there are actually many of us,” she said.

That surreal night, Smart waited for Mitchell to walk into the tent. As a self-proclaimed “late bloomer,” what might have happened next is unthinkable and remains shrouded in mystery.

Shortly before the kidnapping, she recalled, “My friend was telling me what sex was, and I was like, ‘What? My parents have done it six times? It’s horrible!'” That was all I knew about sex. “

She learned from the church that sex before marriage was strictly taboo. “Otherwise, you’re dirty, you’re ruined,” she said. “They used all kinds of analogies, like when you have sex before marriage, it’s like someone chewing a piece of gum – no one wants a chewed piece of gum.”

After a while, Mitchell strode into the tent and announced on the spot that he was going to make Smart his wife. “No!” she screamed, prompting him to issue the first of many threats, she recalled. “If you scream like that again, I’m going to kill you,” he told her.

Then it was time for them to “consummate our marriage,” she remembers him telling her. She tried to stop him but failed.

“I was sobbing,” she said. “I begged him to stop. I remember it was so painful.”

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The attack caused her so much pain that when he left the tent, she remembers blood running down her thigh and passing out.

Then comes a different kind of pain. When she wakes up, all she can think about is “being that chewed piece of gum, ruined beyond repair, feeling like she’s lost all value.”

She noted that this common misunderstanding “took years to overcome. It took years to realize that anyone who didn’t want to be with me because of what happened didn’t deserve to be with me.”

In 2010, Mitchell was convicted of Smart’s kidnapping and sentenced to life in prison. Baze was released from prison in 2018 after being convicted of his role in the crime. She was arrested in May 2025 for allegedly visiting two Utah parks, which violated her registered sex offender status.

For more about Elizabeth Smart and her new Netflix documentary, subscribe to PEOPLE today or pick up this week’s issue, on newsstands Friday.

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