Smart calls Mitchell 'evil'

Describing him as a master manipulator who used religion as a front to get sex, drugs, alcohol and anything else he wanted, Elizabeth Smart delivered unflappable testimony Thursday as she took the witness stand for the first time against one of her accused kidnappers, Brian David Mitchell.

Smart's testimony was often shocking and hard to hear as she recounted how she was raped constantly by Mitchell, sometimes up to three or four times a day. But she remained amazingly collected for the entire 1 hour and 45 minutes she was on the stand, not once choking up, needing a tissue or even asking for a glass of water.

At the end of her testimony when asked to describe what kind of person Mitchell was, she simply rattled off a list of adjectives, including "evil, wicked, manipulative, sneaky, slimy, selfish, not spiritual, not religious" and "not close to God."

Smart, who was just 14 at the time of her abduction, talked in a soft but authoritative voice as she offered a nightmarish account of how Mitchell started raping her almost immediately after she was kidnapped from her bedroom June 5, 2002, taken to his campsite three miles above her house in the foothills and then "married" to Mitchell in a brief ceremony.

He made her drink alcohol, showed her pornography and used extremely crude language at different times before raping her, Smart recalled, specifically mentioning a day when he returned from going into the city and getting food and supplies.

"He would come off the mountain and say, 'I'm going to (expletive) your eyes out,' " Smart said, while adding during another part of her testimony, "There wasn't an actual 24-hour time period he wasn't able to rape me."

Smart's testimony will be considered in determining whether Mitchell is competent to stand trial on kidnapping and sex-abuse charges. Smart was allowed to testify before his full federal competency hearing, scheduled for next month, because she leaves before that to serve a mission for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

Smart, who turns 22 next month, testified that despite Mitchell's claim of being a man of God and a self-proclaimed prophet, "he was religious, but not spiritual, not Christ-like."

"He used religion to get what he wanted. He had an excuse for everything he did with a religious side to it," she said. "Any time that I showed resistance or hesitation … he'd turn to me and say, 'The Lord has commandeth you to do this. You have to experience the lowest form of humanity to experience the highest.' "

But rather than religion, what actually drove Mitchell was sex, Smart said.

"Was there ever a time he didn't talk about sex or want sex?" U.S. Attorney for Utah Brett Tolman asked Smart during her testimony.

"No," she replied.