This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2016, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.
Pornography made her captor more violent, Elizabeth Smart said in a video posted online Friday.
Produced by the anti-porn advocacy group Fight the New Drug, the 5-minute video delves into how Smart's convicted kidnapper, Brian David Mitchell, would "just sit and look" at various "hard-core" porn magazines.
"I can't say that he would not have gone out and kidnapped me had he not looked at pornography," Smart says in the video. "All I know is that pornography made my living hell worse."
Smart was held captive for nine months in the Utah mountains after Mitchell and his wife, Wanda Eileen Barzee, pulled the then-14-year-old Salt Lake City girl from her bed at knifepoint in June 2002. He continually raped her, Smart said, but assaulted her more frequently after he had been looking at porn.
"It just led to him raping me more, more than he already did — which was a lot," she says in the video. "Looking at pornography wasn't enough for him. Having sex with his wife after looking at pornography wasn't enough for him. Then it led to him finally going out and kidnapping me. He just always wanted more."
Smart was rescued in March 2003 and since has become a child-safety and anti-porn activist. Now 28, Elizabeth Smart-Gilmour is a contributor for ABC News.
Twitter: @CourtneyLTanner