Smart, 2 other Utahns honored in Washington

WASHINGTON — Elizabeth Smart helped the Justice Department unveil a new pamphlet aimed at children who have returned home after being abducted.

The pamphlet was presented at the National Missing Children's Day Ceremony Wednesday at the department headquarters.

At the same ceremony, Elizabeth's father, Ed Smart, gave a speech, the department honored Lt. Jessica Farnsworth from the Utah Attorney General's Office of Investigations and a fifth-grader from Sandy displayed her winning poster to commemorate the occasion.

"Our children are our nation's most valuable treasure. It is therefore an honor to acknowledge those who work to make childhood the safe and hopeful time it should be," said U.S. Attorney General Michael B. Mukasey.

Elizabeth Smart and four other survivors of abductions met twice over the past year to work on the pamphlet "You're Not Alone: The Journey from Abduction To Empowerment."

Designed to look like a journal, Smart and the co-authors told stories of their abduction and how they dealt with their emotions once they arrived home.

Just more than five years ago, Elizabeth Smart was found safe and returned home after being abducted for nine months. The cases against Brian David Mitchell and his estranged wife and co-defendant, Wanda Barzee, both charged with kidnapping Smart, have been delayed due to other court hearings on their mental competencies.

The department already had printed pamphlets for parents and families on how to cope with a missing child, pamphlets for the siblings left behind and now the latest one for those who return home themselves.

"As you are all too aware, the journey can be tough," Smart and the four other authors write. "Our experiences — the abduction itself, our responses to it, and other life events — have shaped our lives in ways that we didn't always expect. We are who we are today because we chose to turn a negative experience into a positive one and to move forward on our journey from abduction to empowerment."

Smart said she has talked with other people who came home after abduction but not in the way the four of them discussed what to put in the book.

"I thought about it a lot," Smart said, after the department asked her to participate. "It finally came down to it; it was something that needed to be done."

In her section of the pamphlet called "Elizabeth's Story," Smart describes how she was kidnapped from her bed. She said she had no idea how big the search was for her and even today people still come up to her "and tell me how much they searched for me and prayed for my safe return."