Brian David Mitchell was the opener, walking into federal court shackled, singing hymns, his lawyer looking worriedly at him, until the judge ordered him out of the courtroom and into a cell with video and audio of the hearing.

Then Elizabeth Smart strode in with her mother, her father, brothers, aunts, uncles and grandmother waiting there in the first row for her. Under oath, she told for the first time in public what Mitchell had done to her from the day he kidnapped her in June 2002 until he, his wife Wanda Barzee and Smart were spotted in Sandy nine months later.

Hers is a story of unrelenting sexual violence, personal and spiritual degradation, bondage and deprivation -- all under Mitchell's threats to kill her and her family if she protested or tried to escape.

Elizabeth Smart was 14 years old.

And Mitchell, it appears, clothed it all in his homemade and deeply manipulative "religiosity" that he could switch on and off as it suited his base needs.

Smart's testimony was part of an ongoing legal debate on whether Mitchell is mentally competent to stand trial in her abduction. He has been diagnosed with a delusional disorder.

Smart doesn't buy it. Mitchell, she said, was "religious, but not spiritual, not Christlike."

He used costumes -- robes, headgear, sandals -- and his power of persuasion to cadge money, meals, drugs and booze, she said. He convinced Barzee to take an explicit role in Smart's abduction

and his "marriage" to her. He plotted to kidnap another young Mormon girl but got spooked out of it, Smart said.

She also testified that Mitchell was an informed guy, knew a lot about many things, but never appeared confused or out of control.

"He had to be right," Smart said. "He had to be the authority on that topic.... he was a very capable, intelligent human being," she said, who lied easily and often.

In so many ways, the man she described resembles other power-drunk zealots turned sexual predators: Jim Jones, David Koresh, Warren S. Jeffs.

But unlike most of their victims, Smart survived physically, mentally and spiritually. It is easy to imagine she would have liked to testify in Mitchell's presence, to shame him with her truth. But the man who tormented her, it seems, could not have borne that.

In the six years since she's been home, Smart graduated from high school, worked at a bank and attended Brigham Young University. She's set to leave in November for Paris to serve a mission for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

Smart is 21 now, self-possessed and well-spoken, clearly beloved of her family. In testifying, she shed the burden of being defined by what had been done to her. On Thursday, she told her story and once again proved her courage.

When it was all over, it came to me: Elizabeth Smart personifies what the writer Jane Smiley once called "the operation of grace in the material world."

pegmcentee@sltrib.com