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About Elizabeth Smart and Kids in General
About Elizabeth Smart and Kids in General
The recent trial of Elizabeth Smart’s abductors is in the news. To recap, in June 2002, 14-year-old Elizabeth Smart was kidnapped from her bedroom at knifepoint and held for 9 months by a religious nut who had her terrorized. I don’t know how long it takes for someone to overcome that kind of experience at such a young age.
Remembering myself at 14, I do know that no nut would have been capable of preventing me from escape, short of keeping me in irons in a fortress-like basement. The nut “married†her and raped her and told her she was his wife. He wanted her to keep a diary and because he was reading it, she pretended to like being where she was, but in French, wrote that she hated it and wanted to be back with her family.
It would seem that young Elizabeth didn’t have any of the emotional stamina that would have led to an inventive escape. And she had opportunities. They took her to restaurants and shopping. Once in a cafe, an alert detective questioned her and wanted to look under her veil but her “husband’s†other wife squeezed her leg and she kept mum. I would have been screaming. What kind of upbringing turns out such a wimp?
I believe that middle- and upper-class families cocoon their children who are then incapable of dealing with harsh realities should they be forced to. Oh, no question, my mother would have cocooned me if she could, but she worked and didn’t know how pervasive evil was in our neighborhood. A friend of the family molested me. I never told, but I stayed away from him. (He owes me his life – my dad and uncles would have killed him, no question. Greek justice.) Perverts would stalk me at the local theater, sitting next to me and I would get up and move. Piece of cake. You don’t have to explain yourself, just move. And you don’t have to have nightmares about it either, just move.
Yet parents get upset if schools warn against danger, wanting to protect their children from reality. But reality has a way of finding the unprepared.
xx, Teal
posted on Nov 11, 2010 8:34 PM ()
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Also, a psychologist on the show said 8 out of 10 children will have been molested during childhood!