PARK CITY, Utah, Sept. 2, 2016 (Gephardt Daily) — The LDS Church teachings that helped teenage abductee Elizabeth Smart survive her 9-month ordeal and countless rapes by kidnapper Brian David Mitchell are the same teachings that nearly broke her spirit after her rescue, she says.
Smart — now 28 and double the age she was when taken at knife point from her family’s home in the Federal Heights area of Salt Lake City — shared her thoughts on shaming the victim in an online interview published this week by Broadly on Vice.com.
“I did make that promise to myself that I was going to wait until marriage before I had sex,” Smart told her interviewer, who visited her at her Park City home. The belief in celibacy before marriage is one that is stressed to young members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
“Well, then I was kidnapped and I was raped, and one of the first thoughts I had was, ‘No one is ever going to want to marry me now: I’m worthless, I’m filthy, I’m dirty.’ I think every rape survivor feels those same feelings, but having that with the pressure of faith compounded on top—it was almost crippling.”
Smart is an active member of the LDS church, and took a break from her music studies at church school Brigham Young University to serve an LDS mission to France.
But in the years following her kidnapping and recovery, Smart said the church’s “purity culture” was hurtful to her as a survivor of rape. Smart told her interviewer about celibacy lectures she sat through in high school as an LDS Seminary student.
“You’re like this beautiful fence,” she remembers being told in one lecture. “And you hammer these nails in, and then every time you have sex with someone else, it’s like you’re hammering in another nail. And you can’t take them out, you can repent of them, but the holes are still there.”
Smart said as a teenager whose virginity had been taken by force, she was hurt by the words.
“I just remember thinking, ‘This is terrible. Do they not realize I’m sitting in class? Do they not realize that I’m listening to what they’re saying?’ Those are terrible analogies. No one should use them, period,” she said.
“Especially for someone who’s been raped, they’ve already felt these feelings of worthlessness, of filth, of just … being so crushed, and then to hear a teacher come back and say, ‘Nobody wants you now’… You just think, ‘I should just die right now.'”
Smart said it was her faith that helped her survive Mitchell’s constant abuse.
“I think the power of faith is amazing, the hope and the healing that it can bring to people,” she said. “But I also think there’s another side of it that can be potentially very harmful, especially when a lot of religions teach that sexual relations are meant for marriage … It’s so stressed that girls in particular tie their worth to their virginity, or, for lack of a better word, purity.”
Smart said it took her years to state publicly that she was a rape survivor, and she never spoke of it publicly until she testified at her abductors’ trials.
“It’s hard to come forward. That’s probably one of the hardest things that I’ve ever had to do: to say, ‘I was raped.'”
Now a wife, a mother, and a speaker and advocate for victims, Smart told the reporter she would like to see a change in the way rape survivors are viewed.
“The way we talk about (sex and abstinence) needs to change,” Smart said. “People need to realize there is nothing that can detract from your worth. When it comes to rape and sexual violence and abuse, that can never detract from who you are.”
The church has always taught one of the things she wants it to start teaching-that rape victims are innocent. But to not teach one’s “value” as a spouse has nothing to do with their virginity is foolish. And to reach nothing can detract from one’s worth is similar – otherwise there would be no value in staying at virgin. And obviously a rape victim is as pure as a virgin.
One’s value as a human being is intrinsic. It has nothing to do with them and everything to do with the fact that one of the most powerful and important beings in the universe, Jesus Christ, died for them as a display of his very personal love. Whether or not someone has a spotted or difficult past is irrelevant. If they are moving in the right direction, they’re doing much better than the life-long virgin who is moving in the wrong direction.
Difficulties may leave scars, but they also leave lessons, wisdom, knowledge, and truth. It is those who lack scars that I wonder about because failure early on often leads to success sooner.
This is interesting. She is right in some regards and I believe 100% well meaning but there will be those who misconstrue what she is saying and even perhaps, implying (or better yet, what the selected quotes are implying), to back up their beliefs that we don’t need to emphasize abstinence, because they believe it is harmful. We always need to advocate that sexual activities should be held until marriage. However, we don’t need awful analogies to convey a message worth hearing. We don’t need to blame victims (which I don’t think most people ever mean to do) either. We need to teach that the atonement can cleanse us of any sins, even ones most people could never even imagine committing. The atonement can overcompensate for the awfulness in every average and every rare case. But to take away the emphasis on obedience is to cut away at the only power that can save any of us. For the atonement to be fully realized we need to be familiar with every last drop of justice.
I would hope that she see’s the forest for the trees here. BYU shames and punishes the victims of rape, because of this policy. Young children are grilled by their untrained Bishops in private about their sexual activities, including masturbation. in their worthiness interviews. Heck even the Prophet had to make up a story about a “flaming Sword Angel” and lie to Emma and his flock about his proclivity to perpetuate his carnal desires. And further still the LDS Church’s Utah theoslature could have done something about the abuse in Short Creek (FLDS) and they turned a blind eye. Unfortunately the problems are systemic.
It is hard to know what she really wants in this article.
I am sure most of us agree with the idea that what happens to you is a lot different from what we willingly do.
For us to quit teaching we should strive for “purity” in our lives is something we must not ever quit, but we must also stress that maintaining high standards in our lives has absolutely nothing to with being attacked by dirty beasts.
Keep in mind this is an article about an article. A good suggestion might be to go read the actual story in “Broadly” by the actual author who spent a day with Elizabeth Smart interviewing her. CONTEXT BABY!
Right or wrong, it seems pretty clear that “what she wants” is for religious judgment and condemnation regarding sex and “loss of virginity” to stop whether it is voluntary or involuntary. She seems to advocate for not tying a person’s value to some perceived “sexual purity” or lack of it. It does not appear that Ms. Smart or her interviewer wish to wrap the sentiment within any LDS context. Isn’t a basic part of all Christianity to “JUDGE NOT”? I think Elizabeth Smart wants the judging to stop. I think her motives are PURE AND SIMPLE.
Johnny Rudick…you nailed it pretty well, so did others. It is beyond a victim’s control. And yet there is this implicit conversation that underlies people’s upbringing that somehow thre was something else the victim could have done to preserve their virginity and still alive. Thre is an underlying ancient myth of death before dishonor which serves well in the military, but not when you are in fear of your life in the control of a sexual predator. Being raped is not something someone else has to forgive. If you get through it alive, your job is done. Those that love you don’t care and those that care aren’t really worth knowing. Their judgment has no value. That is their learning curve. What does she want? She wants it to never have happened. To reset time so this is not her forever story. She has so much more to be remembered for.. She needs to have others let it go so she can move on and to perhaps not have the church use her a metaphor, or an analogy or a learning curve for others. To give her a job that doesn’t involve a constant reminder of the most horrible time of her life.
Sorry for the grammar errors. It’s late.
her choice was taken from her. She should have felt no shame at all.
The LDS church has never criticized, belittled, or shamed anyone for being raped. Nor do they consider them members not in good standing. In fact its the quite opposite, the church is willing to do whatever it takes to help victims of rape, and there’s a deep commitment to helping the person even. People that say otherwise just have a hatred towards Mormonism and are looking for a way to tear it down online.
One BYU rape case happened to involve a girl that was doing illegal drugs before she got raped. The school kicked her out for the illegal drugs, then all the haters and trolls online end up believing the LDS church is for shunning victims of rape. The rape had nothing to do with that student being kicked out. Illegal drugs are against the law and the standards for BYU. But people love to hate the church so they will go ahead and twist this story as well.
I am a muslim and I thought Bible had pretty much the same stuff, not sure how it is with Mormons. In our faith rape victims are considered innocent and chaste regardless of what the culture thinks. It’s usually the dumb cultures that promote this sort of beliefs and it’s sad. I feel that rape victims who’re virgins will always feel like that not only because of the religious beliefs but because your virginity is not something you want to give to some asshole but someone you feel special about or someone you want it to happen with. It’s sad that women are taught all this nonsense, rape victims have to go through so much already and these sort of beliefs just add to the pain.