Experts: Teen was brainwashed

Smart family faces tough road to recovery

Boston Herald/March 4, 2003
By Tom Mashberg

Experts say the dynamics that bring about successful mind control are essentially similar whether the victim has been abducted and physically or emotionally tormented - as was the case with Patricia Hearst and apparently with [Elizabeth Smart] - or seduced into a cult such as the Raelians or Branch Davidians.

They next employ "mystical manipulation." This is done by creating apparent threats to the abductee's safety, then arranging for the abductor to "rescue" the captive and appear all powerful. Finally, in the case of an adolescent like Smart, the lead captor gains full submission by portraying himself as her "spiritual father" as well as a messianic figure.

Boston attorney J. Albert Johnson, who defended Patty Hearst when she was tried as a bank robber in 1976 after her 19-month kidnapping by the Symbionese Liberation Army, said his client, who was only 19 when she was abducted, "underwent the very same brutal ordeal as Elizabeth Smart."

Elizabeth Smart was likely in the thrall of her captors - and psychologically incapable of escaping them - within a month of her ordeal, experts on brainwashing and cult behavior said yesterday.

"She was completely in a bubble that he (abductor Brian David Mitchell) created and pulled tightly around her," Rick Ross, a New Jersey-based cult deprogrammer, said of the 15-year-old Utah girl.

"We know she was isolated in the mountains and made unrecognizable," he said. "With that kind of coercion, a conversion can take as little as two or three weeks."

Experts say the dynamics that bring about successful mind control are essentially similar whether the victim has been abducted and physically or emotionally tormented - as was the case with Patricia Hearst and apparently with Smart - or seduced into a cult such as the Raelians or Branch Davidians.

It begins with "environmental control," in which the victim is prohibited from outside contacts.

The abductors then espouse group beliefs that are treated as "sacred and unquestionable."

They next employ "mystical manipulation." This is done by creating apparent threats to the abductee's safety, then arranging for the abductor to "rescue" the captive and appear all powerful. Finally, in the case of an adolescent like Smart, the lead captor gains full submission by portraying himself as her "spiritual father" as well as a messianic figure.

"What people on the outside don't understand is that the psychological bonds these people can put on kids are a lot more binding that actual physical chains," said Robert W. Butterworth, a California psychologist. "They were well along in stripping away her identity. She was dressing differently, hearing nothing but their pseudo-religious talk. It was very much like the Taliban in Afghanistan."

An added element, experts say, are threats of violence and retaliation against the captive's family if she seeks to stray from the fold.

Experts said Smart and her family face difficult but surmountable hurdles as they try to regain the normalcy that has eluded them.

"There will be tough issues the family must face," said Mike Gibson, head of Operation Lookout, a group that helps reunite families. "The parents will have to hear about issues they won't want to know about: possible physical or emotional torture, sexual violence, forced drug use," he said. "Any normal parent would be apprehensive about all this. But you want your kid to be candid, too."

Gibson said the Smart family will have to endure skepticism and second-guessing from people who cannot understand why their daughter never simply fled.

And the family will have to accommodate law enforcement, which will want Elizabeth to revisit her 9-month ordeal to make a case against the abductors, even as the embarrassed 15-year-old seeks to put the misery out of her mind.

"This family is rejoicing," he said. "But they will also be wanting to keep her near to them at just the time in her life when she needs to become an independent teenager."

Boston attorney J. Albert Johnson, who defended Patty Hearst when she was tried as a bank robber in 1976 after her 19-month kidnapping by the Symbionese Liberation Army, said his client, who was only 19 when she was abducted, "underwent the very same brutal ordeal as Elizabeth Smart."

"The ordeal of her kidnapping by force of arms," he said, "and the torture, rape and humiliation she endured, should never allow anyone to seriously doubt she or Elizabeth had any choice whatsoever but to stay with the kidnappers."

His client, he added, recovered after her release, reconnected with her parents and sisters, and lives a happy life in Connecticut. "She made clear again and again to me she never lost her love for them, and the resumption of the family relationship after her capture was very swift indeed," he said.