Elizabeth Smart

And then I was being very intensively questioned by two middle-aged white men, clearly religious.

Yeah.

I was very sheltered as a kid.

My parents didn't call a penis a penis.

It was like your privates.

I had to go down the whole pathway of being like, oh, he hurt me.

Oh, he molested me.

Oh, he raped me.

Oh, he stuck himself inside.

He forced his penis inside my vagina.

I had to get to that level of language.

That I was like, this is the worst thing ever.

I never want to talk about this again.

And if these are psychiatrists, I am not going near anyone ever again.

If I really understood what it was, it could have benefited me, but I will forever be grateful to my parents because they were understandably panicked when I was like, nope, I'm not doing this.

My parents went to therapy and their therapist was like, if she doesn't want to talk, it's okay.

It's not going to do her any good if she doesn't want to.

You need to let her make her own choices and you just need to make sure you're taking care of yourselves because whatever she's been through,

will have been awful.

And you need to make sure you're both in a place that if she wants to talk to you, you can be in a place to hear it.