Elizabeth Smart’s New Lifetime Special ‘Smart Justice’ Brings Together Abduction Survivors in Hopes of Helping Jayme Closs
She’s doing what she can to help. Elizabeth Smart has a new Lifetime special coming out to offer safety advice to people like Jayme Closs, and it’s going to feature six other kidnapping survivors, according to Radar Online. Watch the video above to see a promo for the series.
Gina DeJesus, Katie Beers, Alicia Kozakiewicz, Sarah Maynard, Kara Robinson, and Denise Huskins are all on the panel Elizabeth, 31, hosts for the special. Just as a few examples of their stories, Gina was kidnapped by Ariel Castro at age 14 and held captive in his Cleveland, Ohio home for nine years, and Katie was once abducted by a family friend and held in an underground bunker for 17 days. Elizabeth was famously kidnapped from her home at the young age of 14 and held captive and raped daily for nine months in which she was forced to take drugs, drink alcohol and look at pornographic images. Now, she’s brought together a panel of women to share their stories of abuse and survival, with the hope that they can somehow help Jayme heal.
Jayme disappeared on October 15, 2018, after her parents were found dead in the family’s home in Barron, Wisconsin. She was, thankfully, found alive in January after she was missing for three months, and her kidnapper, Jake Patterson, pled guilty to two charges of first-degree intentional homicide and one charge of kidnapping during a court hearing in late March.
“Only survivors of abduction can truly understand her pain,” Elizabeth says in the trailer. “We want to help her move forward.” Elizabeth spoke exclusively with In Touch magazine on April 24 about how much she’s grown from her own past experiences and said, “To know that there are other people out there who understand what you’ve experienced is empowering … [Jayme] may never decide to tell her story, and that is perfectly all right, but it’s important to talk about these cases, to have the input from other survivors because when you go through abuse of any kind, it can be extremely isolating.”
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