Elizabeth Smart Empowers Gwinnett Students, Leaders

When a man entered Elizabeth Smart’s bedroom and held a knife to her throat, she said she thought she had two options: scream and put her entire family in danger or go with the man.

“Had I been educated, I would’ve known there are more than two options,” she said in front of a sold-out crowd at  in Norcross on Friday. She was speaking there to advocate child empowerment, specifically for the program radKIDS, which teaches children to escape from people who are doing bad things to them—through force, if necessary.

The poised and petite now-college senior said if she would’ve known that she could have acted against the man, she would have saved herself from nine months of sexual abuse and terror. “I just didn’t know that I had the power to stop him,” she said.

Smart was abducted on June 5, 2002 in a suburb of Salt Lake City by a man who had done some house work for the family, Brian David Mitchell. 

“For the next nine months, I was repeated told I was wicked, that my family was wicked. I was told it was honor to be kidnapped by him,” she said, recalling the horror. She was recovered nine months later, after she was spotted, disguised, with the couple. Mitchell and Wanda Barzee were eventually indicted for the kidnapping. 

Smart said she is an advocate of this particular program, which is sponsored locally by Keep Georgia Safe, because it teaches kids to think differently: It tells them that they can speak out and act out, no matter who is hurting them, and it teaches kids that--no matter what--it is not their fault.

Elizabeth’s father, Ed Smart, spoke passionately about educating and training kids as well.  He said that every parent wants to protect their children, to put a bubble around them—but that parents can’t always be there. “Wouldn’t you do something to empower you children if you could?”

Greater Atlanta participates in the radKIDS program, though Gwinnett County Public Schools do not, with certified instructors teaching kids ways of thinking about protecting themselves. That includes learning self-defense techniques with instructors in armored suits.

Johns Creek Police officers are among the instructors in the GAC program. “We teach kids to be quiet and polite. But when something happens, they don’t need to be quiet,” said Officer M.D. Meberg of the Johns Creek Police, speaking of the shift in thinking they wish to accomplish with radKIDS.  

Richard Daley, the Executive Director of the program, said that they have documented saving 80 kids through the empowerment program—and thousands of kids have disclosed sexual abuse as well.

“We teach kids to be polite to grown-ups,” Daley said, “But what message are we sending?” He said that part of the goal is to change the message, to let kinds know that if someone is hurting them, they can fight back.  He recalled a story of a girl who had been through the radKIDS program.

A man entered her and her sister’s bedroom at night and tried to abduct them. Thinking quick, she repeatedly complained that she had to use the bathroom. When he let her go, she escaped to her parents’ room and screamed for help. The man jumped out the window and a crisis was averted. “Unlike any other education program in the country, we teach them how to do it,” Daley said.

Smart said she decided early in her ordeal that she would do anything it took to see her family again—and that it was the values instilled in her by her family that allowed her to live through it. She said that they gave her strong religious beliefs, and always told her that “nobody can force us into a decision or make a decision for us,” so she had some strength and power to hang on.