July 29 (Gephardt Daily/UPI) — A&E Networks says it has set premiere dates for two programs timed to the 15th anniversary of Elizabeth Smart‘s childhood abduction.
“Elizabeth Smart: Autobiography” will air in two 90-minute installments on A&E Nov. 12-13, while the Lifetime Original Movie “I Am Elizabeth Smart” — starring Skeet Ulrich, Deirdre Lovejoy and Alana Boden — is to debut on Nov. 18.
“With Lifetime as the leading movie brand in cable and A&E at the forefront of long form documentary storytelling, we have the unique opportunity to utilize the combined power of our portfolio to tell critical stories like this one and connect with a wider audience in original and powerful ways,” Rob Sharenow, president of programming for A&E Networks, said in a statement Friday.
Smart, who cooperated with the making of the documentary and TV movie, was 14 when she was abducted by a religious fanatic in June 2002 from her home in Salt Lake City. She was held captive for nine months during which she was starved and raped until she was recognized and recovered.
“I feel like I could sum up my days in three words,” Smart said in a “Crime Watch Daily” interview that aired in March, “boredom, abuse and rape. And that was my life. And there were so many times that I just felt, ‘This is never going to end.'”
Smart now runs a foundation dedicated to helping kidnap victims and their recovery. Missing young people from Utah she has championed include Macin Smith, missing for nearly two years from St. George, and Elizabeth Salgado, who disappeared in Provo in April of 2015.
Smart, 29, lives in Park City with her husband and their two young children. The couple met while each served a France-Paris mission for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
In 2014, Smart shared some of her story in a brief TEDx talk hosted by the University of Nevada. See it by clicking the player below.
