Elizabeth Smart

So let's start just by being a little bit more compassionate and start by believing.

I mean, the cases when a victim discloses and they turn out to be false, right?

are so, so small and their stories almost always unravel right at the very beginning.

I mean, you do not put yourself in this situation in like the hopes for attention or popularity or fame because it is painful.

It is so painful already.

You don't do it.

Like the number, the percentage of false reports are so small.

You will always be 100% safer believing them, believing that it's true.

I love that you were able to come to a place where you can say, I don't regret a single thing I did because I'm here.

Because I can see so many victims spiraling.

And if I wouldn't have, even before it happened, right?

If I wouldn't have done this, if I wouldn't have been here, if I wouldn't have wore that, if I wouldn't have...

And I think that's a place that you can easily get lost in.

But to say, like, if you came out of it alive and you have the chance to be you and rebuild you and whatever that takes, like, you won.

You did everything that you were supposed to do.

And in your story, I mean, there was you.

You didn't just like let it happen to you, you know, as much as they tried to control you.

I think one of the coolest parts is how you got found was because of you.

You took everything that he taught you about how to be a master manipulator and kind of reversed that back on him.

So can you talk a little bit about how you decided, like, I need to get back to Salt Lake and here's how I'm going to get him to think it was his idea?