Elizabeth Smart News

In a recent summit on human trafficking at Johns Hopkins University, kidnapping survivor Elizabeth Smart made some surprising remarks about why victims of rape may not try to escape their captors.

Steven Stayner, right foreground was reunited with his family following a seven-year kidnap ordeal in California that began in 1972.

Sexual assault cases don't occur in a vacuum, even when they are so egregious that they defy the imagination.

She has emerged as an advocate for human trafficking victims - and recently, a critic of abstinence-only sex education.

Did MSNBC host Melissa Harris-Perry really compare a North Carolina law to the kidnapping of Amanda Berry, Gina DeJesus, and Michelle Knight in Ohio? It sure seems like she did.

The annals of criminal history are writ large with ordinary streets that hide dark secrets, but even so the peculiar horror believed to have been perpetrated by Ariel Castro on Seymour Ave in the rust-belt city of Cleveland stands out.

Cleveland City Councilman Brian Cummins said today that the women who survived a decade-long kidnapping ordeal are beginning to get lawyers to help with compensation.

They've been to hell and back, but a fulfilling life is within reach for the three Cleveland abduction survivors: just look at Elizabeth Smart and Jaycee Dugard.

In this Thursday, May 9, 2013 file photo, a "Welcome Home" sign is posted at a restaurant near a crime scene where three women were held captive for a decade in Cleveland.

Elizabeth Smart was kidnapped from her bedroom at 14, declared a child bride by her captor and sexually assaulted for nine months.

Elizabeth Smart was kidnapped from her bedroom at 14, declared a child bride by her captor and sexually assaulted for nine months.

George Pyle has been a newspaper writer in Kansas, Utah, Upstate New York, and now Utah again, for more than 30 years - most of it as an editorial writer and columnist.

Elizabeth SmartIn 2002, the kidnapping of 14-year-old Elizabeth Smart captured the nation's attention.

Ariel Castro appears in Cleveland Municipal court Thursday alongside defense attorney Kathleen DeMetz after he was charged with four counts of kidnapping and three counts of rape.

First lady Michelle Obama spoke for many Americans when she referred to the Cleveland kidnapping case as "a parent's worst nightmare." The fact that the three female victims were found a decade after they disappeared is truly reason for celebration and hope.

How many more people - captured as girls, boys, young teens - are living, right now, in dark captivity in the home of some deranged person? The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children currently has more than 300 cases on file, 22 of them from Alabama.

There are close to 300 people listed as missing in Iowa right now. According to the Iowa Department of Public Safety most of them were teens when they disappeared.

Cleveland Mayor Frank G. Jackson issued a cease and desist order on Thursday to stop city officials from releasing information to the press relating to the Amanda Berry, Gina DeJesus and Michelle Knight kidnapping case.

Virginity has no bearing on a person's worth, yet 'purity balls' and shaming victims make our culture more medieval than modern Elizabeth Smart, who was kidnapped as a 14-year-old in 2002, recently gave a speech about sexual assault.

Last week, Elizabeth Smart publicly reflected on her experience of being abducted and repeatedly raped for months at age fourteen: Smart spoke at a Johns Hopkins human trafficking forum, saying she was raised in a religious household and recalled a school teacher who spoke once about abstinence and compared sex to chewing gum.