Good was taken at knifepoint at age 14 from her mattress in Salt Lake Metropolis by a self-described prophet who held her captive for 9 months a number of miles from her residence.
“I’ll name them and inform them that I like them,” she stated of her dad and mom, Ed and Lois Good, who divorced in 2019. “Once they look again, I’m fairly certain they’ll say that what they went by after I used to be taken was essentially the most troublesome factor they ever did.”
Wanting again herself, Good, 35, stated these traumatic 9 months may have left her bitter and damaged.
As a substitute, she has discovered to deal with the sweetness in her life, and she or he devotes her time to being a toddler security advocate, serving to different sexual assault survivors and educating individuals learn how to fight and heal from such assaults.
She does her work by the Elizabeth Smart Foundation, which she and her father based in 2011 with $50,000 awarded to Smart by clothier Diane von Furstenberg. This month, Good launched Wholehearted Consent, an internet site with info for fogeys on learn how to discuss to teenagers about sexual consent.
“I’m definitely not an professional on intercourse ed, however I’m an professional in having my boundaries violated,” she stated. “I really feel we actually want to offer extra schooling.”
Her basis provides a wide range of packages, together with a Smart Talks podcast and Smart Defense programs designed by martial arts specialists.
Good stated she began providing self-defense courses after she was sexually assaulted on a flight in 2019. When she fell asleep on the airplane, the person seated subsequent to her started rubbing her interior thigh, she stated, noting that expenses had been filed towards him, however there wasn’t sufficient proof for prosecution.
Good stated she doesn’t know whether or not fundamental strikes from Brazilian jujitsu or Thai boxing, which she discovered after the assault, would have helped her in 2002. On June 5 of that yr, self-avowed prophet Brian David Mitchell broke into her home and held a knife to her neck whereas she was sleeping in mattress along with her youthful sister. Mitchell needed to make her his second spouse.
“It was terrifying — it didn’t really feel prefer it might be actual,” Good stated. “He’d damaged into my secure place and are available into the center of our residence. I had no motive to doubt he would hurt my household if I didn’t go together with him.”
Mitchell compelled Good to stroll three miles in her pink silk pajamas to a distant mountain campsite, the place he and his common-law spouse, Wanda Barzee, chained her up and held an impromptu wedding ceremony ceremony. Good stated she was raped day by day over the 9 months she was held captive. In December 2010, Mitchell was convicted of kidnapping her.
“I can’t assure that understanding self-defense would have prevented me from being kidnapped, however schooling is energy nonetheless,” Good stated.
“Perhaps if I’d had slightly extra confidence and will hit again actually laborious or kick actually laborious or scream, he’d have turn into so scared he wouldn’t have tried to take me,” she stated. “Perhaps understanding these issues would have made a distinction.”
Good grew up as a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and was repeatedly taught the significance of chastity, she stated.
“I had so many Sunday faculty classes that boiled all the way down to the identical factor, which was ‘Don’t have intercourse earlier than marriage,’” Good stated. “So to expertise being raped repeatedly, I actually felt ruined. I felt embarrassed and ashamed, although I knew it wasn’t my fault.”
“I felt like I wasn’t worthy to be saved,” she stated. “I felt like I used to be by no means going to be beloved.”
In time, she stated she got here to understand that her household would nonetheless love and settle for her, and that gave her hope and a will to outlive.
“I dreamed of the day once I may simply hug my mother once more, once I may simply inform my dad, ‘I like you’ once more,” Good stated.
When she was lastly rescued on a busy Salt Lake County road, Good stated it took a couple of minutes for her to understand she was secure. Police had handcuffed her and put her in a patrol automotive, main her to imagine that she was going to jail, she stated.
“I believed I used to be in hassle,” she stated. “When my dad got here in [to the police station] and began hugging the life out of me, I didn’t know what the long run held. However I additionally felt prefer it was going to be OK as a result of my dad was there.”
Good stated she is now residing in Wasatch County, Utah, the place she and her husband Matthew Gilmour reside a daily life and sometimes go snowboarding with their three youngsters: Chloe, 8, James, 5, and Olivia, 4. Good met Gilmour in 2009 after they had been Mormon missionaries in France.
At residence, she stated she likes to do regular actions: make sizzling chocolate for her children, watch “The Great British Baking Show” and play the harp, which she took up as a toddler.
She nonetheless typically marvels that she has the luxurious to care about frivolous issues like the colour of her hair. Late final summer time, Good determined to turn into a redhead.
“I’d been blond my complete life and I believed, ‘What a silly remorse if I received to the tip of my life and puzzled what I’d have appeared like as a redhead?’” she stated.
“My little boy was not glad in any respect,” Good stated, including that he sobbed.
And but it was an unremarkable parenting second.
“On days once I get caught up in my very own head, it’s a very good feeling to step again and say, ‘I’m such a fortunate lady — I’ve no room to complain,’” Good stated.
She after all faces moments tougher than comforting a toddler who’s briefly upset. However she says she has the boldness and power to tackle the bigger hardships thrown at her. Day by day, she stated, she works to make her current and her future greater than her previous.
“Now, at any time when there’s a problem in entrance of me, I say to myself, ‘Elizabeth you are able to do this. You survived 9 months with these creeps. For those who may survive that, you are able to do something.’”
