How Did Abductors Control Elizabeth Smart?

March 13, 2003 -- How could abductors keep a girl like Elizabeth Smart from fleeing during nine months of captivity?

Though details about the teen's captivity are scarce, experts say her alleged abductors appear to have used physical and psychological coercion to keep her under control, and that it is possible that a young girl in her circumstances might have even decided she did not want to escape.

"Even though she wasn't physically chained, emotionally she could have been in psychological bondage," said Robert Butterworth, a child psychologist who focuses on trauma and disaster.

Elizabeth was spotted Wednesday in Sandy, Utah, and then reunited with her family, nine months after she was kidnapped from her bedroom in Salt Lake City.

The 15-year-old girl was walking with Brian David Mitchell, a drifter who had worked briefly at the Smart family home, and Mitchell's wife, Wanda Barzee, police said. Elizabeth and Barzee were both wearing makeshift veils and all three were wearing wigs, police said.

The teen initially told police her name was Augustine, and said she could not remove her sunglasses because of recent eye surgery. Even after she was separated from Mitchell and Barzee, she did not give her real name.

"I know you think I'm Elizabeth Smart, but I'm not," Officer Troy Rasmussen recalled Elizabeth saying. After officers asked repeatedly, she admitted their suspicions were correct. Eventually, she responded, "Thou sayeth, I'll say it," which police said they took to be an admission.

She was clearly frightened, they said.

"She was obviously nervous, I could see her T-shirt pounding where her heart was," he said.

Brainwashed?

Elizabeth's father, Ed Smart, said he believed the couple had brainwashed his daughter.

"I can just tell that he did an absolute brainwashing job on her," Smart said. He said he was convinced Elizabeth feared for her life when she was taken in the early hours of June 5.

Since her rescue, witnesses such as Daniel Trotta have come forward saying they remember seeing Elizabeth, Mitchell and Barzee.

Trotta said Elizabeth stayed in his basement apartment for a week in October, along with Mitchell and Barzee. Trotta had befriended Mitchell at a health food store and invited him to stay at his place because Mitchell and his companions were homeless.

"They seemed fine together. She didn't seem like she was in a big hurry to get away or anything," Trotta said, describing the first night the group stayed with him.

"When we first approached her on the street, I wouldn't say that fear was something … that we would have said she was fearful," Sandy police Chief Steve Chapman. But she was acting "in a way that was not consistent with what we would have felt she would have acted at that particular time." He said that Elizabeth did not tell police her name at first.

A Kidnapper’s Tools: Fear, Shame, Lies

Elizabeth may have stayed with her captors out of fear, or they may have convinced her she had no alternative. Her family has said Elizabeth told them she was never left alone.

Kidnappers frequently threaten their victims both emotionally and physically, says Elissa Brown, a child and adolescent psychologist and abuse expert at New York University.

Physical intimidation might include threats of sexual abuse, beatings, or withholding food or human contact. A kidnapper might also threaten the victim's loved ones, Brown says.

"You get kids talking and you get a sense of who matters to them. And no child wants to be responsible for harm to people they love," she said.

Emotional coercion is also common, Brown says. "That could be anything from calling her names, to telling that her family doesn't love her that they weren't looking for her.

"All of that can be incredibly powerful for a child," she said.

Elizabeth's father said his daughter did not know how many people were desperately looking for her.

"I asked her at one time, apparently after August, he had her all over the place, they were in San Diego for a while. And I said, 'Didn't you see any of the big posters on the freeway?' And she didn't," Ed Smart said. Elizabeth saw the blue ribbons attached to trees around Salt Lake City, but did not know they were for her, he said.

Some of the details of Elizabeth's ordeal suggest her abductors were trying to disorient her. Police say she was moved repeatedly over the past nine months. Witnesses saw Elizabeth in a veil and wig, and say she was not allowed to give her name when people spoke to her.

Kidnappers can also make their victims feel guilty or ashamed, experts say. Such feelings might keep a victim from trying to escape.

‘A Messiah Fantasy’

According to Barzee's adult sons, both Mitchell and Barzee were disturbed and thought they saw prophets and angels. Louree Gayler, Barzee's daughter, described living with the two as scary. They said Mitchell, who calls himself "Emmanuel" and says he is a prophet for the homeless, thought he was higher than God.

"I have a suspicion that … there was probably drugs and sexual contact," said former FBI profiler Candice Delong.

"I treated people who suffer from delusions of God speaking to them, and I would not be surprised to find out if he was maybe grooming her to be a wife," Delong said.

Experts also note that Mitchell had once been welcomed into Elizabeth's home as a handyman. Elizabeth might have been more trusting because her parents themselves had once trusted Mitchell.

"This was a religious family. Maybe they [her alleged abductors] twisted her mind to think that God was on their side, as weird that may sound," said Butterworth.

Perhaps an Unwilling Captive?

Maurice Elias, a psychology professor at Rutgers University in New Jersey, suggests it is possible that Elizabeth began to identify with her captors.

"Hypothesis No. 1 is that she may not have been as unwilling a captive as we all might have thought," he said.

Elias stressed that given the limited information available, it is impossible to know what Elizabeth felt over the past nine months, and that she might have been kept under duress the entire time. But he says it is also plausible to think the teen could become a willing captive.

"She's a teenager," he said. "Teenagers often think about independence, they often like to do things that others would consider dangerous or risky."

Witnesses' accounts of Elizabeth's behavior bolsters this hypothesis, he said.

"I can't recall hearing about an abduction case where the abductee seemed to have so much freedom."

Nevertheless, Elias and other experts are emphatic in saying it is wrong to blame Elizabeth for her abduction.

"Kids at this age — 14, 15 — are dealing with many upheavals and trying to find who they are on the planet," he said. "It shouldn't lead to any deep speculation about her personality or her future."

"I do not want this young woman to feel that she did something wrong," agreed Brown, the NYU psychologist. "She's a survivor. She did something right."