When Elizabeth Smart was just 14 years old and living the kind of nightmare most would assume was reserved only for the most dramatic of Hollywood films, she wondered if her life could get any lower.
Kidnapped from her own bedroom in Utah, sleepy, pyjama-clad and while her sister slept next to her, Smart’s reality went on to become one of rape in captivity, death threats and abuse.
Since her rescue in 2003 after nine months in the most brutal kind of prison, 28-year-old Smart has given her time and her energy for causes close to her heart.
This time, Smart has opened up about how pornography aggravated an already terrible scenario.
In a video released on Friday by Fight the New Drug, an anti-porn non-profit group, Smart spoke of how despite the fact she was already raped on consistent basis, she believed her captor's addiction to porn exacerbated the sexual violence and torturous nature of those nine months.
“My captor was really excited and really kind of amped up about something, and he said, ‘I have something and I’m going to show it to you, and you have to look at it.
"And then I remember he pulled out this magazine full of hardcore pornography. And I remember he would just sit and look at it and stare at it...and then when he was done, he would turn and he’d look at me, and he’d be like ‘Now we’re going to do this.’"
More than anything, Smart is stead-fast in her belief that his addiction to pornography made her captor more violent and that she "witnessed first hand just how damaging it is."
"It lead to him raping me more, more than he already did, which was a lot.
