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Elizabeth Smart tells the harrowing story of her kidnapping in a new Netflix documentary(Image: Netflix)

Elizabeth Smart detailed the horrific nine months she spent abducted by paedophile Brian David Mitchell in a new Netflix documentary – revealing that at one point, she thought it might be “better if nobody ever found” her. The child safety activist was kidnapped from her Salt Lake City bedroom at the age of 14 by Mitchell in June 2002.

She was repeatedly tied up, raped and threatened by Mitchell and his wife, Wanda Barzee, over nine months before being rescued by police on a street in the Utah city of Sandy. Mitchell was sentenced to life in prison in 2011 for kidnapping and transporting a minor across state lines for sexual activity, while Barzee received 15 years in prison for the latter charge and was released in 2018.

Speaking about her traumatising experience in Netflix’s Kidnapped: Elizabeth Smart, Elizabeth reveals that Mitchell took her from her bedroom – which she shared with younger sister Mary Katherine – and led her into the woods where he was camping with his wife. He then forced her to consummate their “marriage”.

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Elizabeth Smart was kidnapped at the age of 14 in 2002

“I had lived such an innocent life, I thought that if I rolled onto my stomach, he wouldn’t be able to rape me,” she tells the cameras. “It didn’t matter what I did. Ultimately, he raped me.”

Having grown up in a religious Mormon household, Elizabeth had been warned not to have sex before marriage but had not discussed the difference between consensual sex and rape with her parents. “I felt a lot of shame and I felt like I was filthy,” she says.

“I thought that if my family knew what had happened to me, would they still want me back? Maybe it would be better if nobody ever found me.”

For nine months, Elizabeth was chained up and abused by Mitchell – who told her that God had commanded him to “kidnap seven young girls” with her being the first of the seven. In the heartbreaking interview, she reveals that she would often wake up to Mitchell raping her.

“I had gone from never even holding a boy’s hand to be raped every day, multiple times a day,” she says. “He used God to justify what he did but more than anything, he loved power.

“Every day, he would humiliate me. [Barzee] encouraged him. When he took me down tot he spring where we’d collect the water from, he would hold onto the cable and basically walk me like a dog. I was forced to drink beer after beer until I finally threw up. And he just left me there, face down, in my own vomit.”

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Elizabeth Smart was kidnapped from her bedroom when she was just 14 years old(Image: Alex Wong/Getty Images)

Four months after the kidnapping, Mary Katherine identified Mitchell from his voice on the night Elizabeth was taken, with police eventually putting up posters of the suspect. In March 2003, Mitchell and Barzee were identified in Utah by two witnesses and she was rescued by police officers.

Speaking about being reunited with daughter Elizabeth after nine months, her father Ed says in the documentary: “We open this yellow door and there is a young woman on the sofa. It is not the young woman that left me nine months ago.

“She was a young girl and yet in front of me was this young woman. Her face was sunburned, it was swollen, her hair was pulled back in these braids. I asked, ‘Elizabeth, is it really you?’ And she goes, ‘Yes, dad.’ I held my miracle in my arms.”

Elizabeth adds: “It took me a minute to respond because I thought I was in trouble but finally my dad was there and he was going to protect me. No matter what happened, he wasn’t going to abandon me.”

Now married with three children of her own, Elizabeth is a TV commentator and child safety activist. She has dedicated her career to speaking out against abstinence-only sex education and advocates for victims of child sexual abuse.