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You Are Here: Home» World News » Elizabeth Smart expected to speak at captor's sentencing , May 25, 2011 -- Updated 0842 GMT (1642 HKT)


Elizabeth Smart is expected to address the court Wednesday before her kidnapper, Brian David Mitchell, is sentenced.
Elizabeth Smart is expected to address the court Wednesday before her kidnapper, Brian David Mitchell, is sentenced.
(CNN) -- Brian David Mitchell, the homeless street preacher who abducted, raped and kept a 14-year-old Elizabeth Smart captive for nine months, is scheduled to be sentenced Wednesday. Mitchell faces a maximum sentence of life in prison. He was found guilty in December after jurors rejected the insanity defense mounted by his lawyers.
Smart is expected to speak at Mitchell's sentencing hearing Wednesday afternoon in federal court in Salt Lake City, CNN affiliate KSL reported. During the trial, Smith testified for three days.
In her testimony, Smart said she awoke to find a man holding a cold steel blade to her neck on June 5, 2002. She was taken from her bed and marched up a rugged mountain path in her red silk pajamas.
Elizabeth Smart: 'I have forgiven him'
When they reached Mitchell's remote camp, Smart testified she was "sealed" to her captor in a marriage ceremony, raped and shackled between two trees with a metal cable. She said she was degraded and treated "like an animal."
Smart said she was raped nearly every day during nine months in captivity and forced to drink alcohol, smoke cigarettes and watch Mitchell have sex with his legal wife, Wanda Barzee.
She was forced to wear robes and a veil in public and was not permitted to speak to other people. She said she feared Mitchell would act on his threats to kill her and her family if she did.
She said Mitchell told her their marriage was preordained and that she would be by his side as he successfully battled the Antichrist. They would hold exalted positions in God's new kingdom, she was told.
"I felt that because of what he had done to me, I was marked," Smart testified. "I wasn't the same. My personal value had dropped. I was nothing. Another person could never love me," she added. "I felt like I had a burden the size of a mountain to carry around with me the rest of my life."
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