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Weeks after the anniversary of her rescue from a prolonged and extensive kidnapping and abuse ordeal that captured international headlines, Elizabeth Smart is set to make an appearance in the Tri-Valley to discuss that experience and the lessons learned in the wake of it as an advocate for children’s safety and trafficking and sexual abuse prevention.
Smart has been in the public eye since her abduction in 2002 spurred a nationwide manhunt and media frenzy for months before she was rescued on March 12, 2003. Twenty-two years later, she is set to be featured in the next installment of the Rae Dorough Speaker Series in Livermore.
“I’m always flattered when people think of me because it’s easy to be like it happened a long time ago, and it’s always flattered to be remembered,” Smart told the Weekly in a recent interview.
The upcoming talk is the penultimate event in the current season of the series, which seeks to showcase a wide range of perspectives, stories and conversations as a tribute to its late namesake, a widely recognized supporter of arts and culture events in the Tri-Valley.
“I saw a video of her talking and I was deeply moved,” Livermore Valley Arts CEO Chris Carter said of Smart. “The world should hear her story because it’s ultimately about perseverance and hope in the face of tragedy. We can all learn from her.”
For her part, Smart said that her decades of advocacy for victims of abuse and trafficking and the stories she’s heard from other survivors have been key to understanding the issues at hand and seeking to address them.
“I don’t think anybody gets through life unscathed,” Smart said. “I think we all experience trauma. We all experience different hard situations, emotionally draining experiences. We all have those things in life, so for me I feel like one of the best ways to help us move forward and find inspiration and courage to keep trying another day is through stories. So if people can find that in my story, then it’s worth sharing.”
This is a lesson that wasn’t apparent to Smart immediately after her rescue and the beginning of her work toward recovering from the experience.
“When I was first rescued it really did feel like such an unusual experience,” Smart said. “It really did feel like nobody else could understand, like nobody else could possibly imagine the pain I felt, since no one was sharing their story.”
Smart emphasized the importance of increasing awareness and recognizing the stories of abuse survivors, as well as the ubiquity of abuse and trauma of various kinds.
“I know that, going and speaking, I will not be the only survivor in the room, whether people want to admit it or not,” Smart said.
While Smart’s abduction and the details of it that emerged in the years after in court proceedings against her two kidnappers point to a unique experience that is difficult for many to imagine, Smart said that having had a loving home and supportive family made other, more common forms of child abuse difficult – and horrifying – for her to imagine.
“I’ve met survivors who were abused by family members – can you imagine that level of betrayal?” Smart said. “The people who are supposed to love you the very most and be your shield in life are the ones who are actually hurting you at the moment.”
However, she said that another lesson that had become clear to her from connecting with and advocating for other survivors was that it isn’t worthwhile to compare one person’s experience with another’s.
“That does not serve a purpose, and beyond that we are different people,” Smart said. “Everything about us is different.”
Those differences make it all the more important to spur conversations about abuse and trauma, according to Smart, and to make it clear that it can happen anywhere to anyone.
“I think it’s very easy to have a Hollywood vision of what abuse looks like, and what trauma looks like, and what kidnapping looks like, when in reality it could be your neighbor, it could be anyone,” Smart said. “There’s not just a set stereotype that every trauma falls into, that every perpetrator falls into, which is why it’s so important to have these kinds of community events, to at least be a starting point for these conversations.”
“Overcoming Adversity: The Elizabeth Smart Story” is scheduled for this Sunday (March 30) at 3 p.m. in the Bankhead Theater at 2400 First St. in Livermore. Tickets and more information are available at livermorearts.org.
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