Elizabeth Smart has apparently made an amazing recovery, say Cathy Free and Alex Tresniowski in People. Six years ago, when Smart was 14, she was kidnapped from her Salt Lake City home by a local drifter named Brian David Mitchell. Nine nightmarish months passed before she was finally rescued; police said Mitchell sexually assaulted Smart, aided by his wife. Speaking at length about her ordeal for the first time, Smart says that for three months, the couple mostly kept her chained to a tree at a campsite near her home, and then moved to an abandoned trailer in Lakeside, Calif. They gave her little to eat beyond bread, and made her wear a robe and veil—claiming it was all God’s will. But Smart says she never lost hope. “I always knew that no matter what, I’d still be part of my family.” After her rescue, the key to her readjustment, she says, was letting go of the hate she felt toward her abductors. “Nine months of my life had been taken from me, and I wasn’t going to give them any more of my time.” She also credits playing the harp and her Mormon faith. Now a junior at Brigham Young University, majoring in music, she offers a simple message to other survivors of kidnappings: “Just because something bad happens to you it doesn’t mean you are bad. You are still entitled to every possible happiness.”
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