Skip to footer

Elizabeth Smart, kidnap survivor, marries in Hawaii

Elizabeth Smart, who was captive nine months after being kidnapped from her home in 2002 when she was 14, married her boyfriend of the past year in Hawaii on Saturday.

|
AP Photo/Adrian Sainz
Elizabeth Smart, who survived her kidnapping as a young teen and works as an advocate for missing children, was married Saturday. Here she spoke on Aug. 27, 2012 at Scotts Hill High School, from which missing Tennessee woman Holly Bobo graduated.
  • By Steve Gorman Reuters

| SALT LAKE CITY

Elizabeth Smart, who was kidnapped at age 14 from her Utah home and held for what she described as "nine months of hell," exchanged vows on Saturday with her boyfriend of the past year at a private wedding in Hawaii, her uncle told Reuters.

Smart, 24, and Matthew Gilmour, whom she met while she was serving a religious mission in Europe for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, tied the knot at a Mormon temple overlooking the Pacific on the North Shore of Oahu, her uncle, Tom Smart, said.

RELATED: Are you a 'Helicopter Parent?' take our quiz!

A spokesman for Ms. Smart, Chris Thomas, added in a statement that the couple were accompanied by a small group of immediate family, and he described them as "beaming" as they left the temple on their way to a reception and luau.

The couple was to depart on an "extended honeymoon" after the day's festivities, Thomas said. According to People magazine, Gilmour is 22.

Smart, now an advocate for missing children and occasional television news commentator, announced last month that she was engaged to be married with a wedding anticipated for early summer.

But facing media attention that was growing "increasingly invasive," Smart decided about a week ago that "the best way to avoid significant distraction was to change her wedding plans and to get married in an unscheduled ceremony outside of Utah," Thomas said.

Smart was abducted at knifepoint from her bedroom in June 2002 by a homeless street preacher, Brian David Mitchell, and was repeatedly raped and forced to wander with her captor from town to town for nine months.

She was freed after being spotted by passers-by in a Salt Lake City suburb in 2003. Her kidnapping shocked Americans, and the extensive search for the missing teen was covered exhaustively in the U.S. media.

Mitchell was convicted in 2010 of kidnapping and unlawful transportation of a minor across state lines to engage in sexual activity. He was sentenced in May to life in prison.

Smart testified during Mitchell's trial, describing her time as his captive as "nine months of hell."

Mitchell's wife, Wanda Barzee, was sentenced to a 15-year prison term in 2010 after pleading guilty to conspiracy and cooperating with prosecutors in the case against Mitchell.

ABC News in July announced that it had hired Smart, who has shown composure since her release from captivity, as a contributor on stories about missing persons.

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.
editor@csmonitor.com
Subscribe
Mark Sappenfield
Editor

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

Subscribe to insightful journalism

QR Code to Elizabeth Smart, kidnap survivor, marries in Hawaii
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/The-Culture/Family/2012/0917/Elizabeth-Smart-kidnap-survivor-marries-in-Hawaii
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe