podcast

Two young girls named Elizabeth were abducted. One was held by her father in the basement for 42 years, the other was forced into marriage and sexual relations for nine months. These cases are different, but both captivated the public. The podcast discusses family and non-family abductions, defining them and discussing famous cases. Elizabeth Fritzl was held captive by her father for 26 years and had seven children with him. Elizabeth Smart was abducted by a stranger for nine months. Non-family abductions are usually short and motivated by sexual assault. Two young girls on opposite sides of the globe, both named Elizabeth, and both abducted from their homes. One child was held by her father in the basement of her home until she was 42. The other held for nine months, forced into marriage and sexual relations by a stranger. Are these cases similar or strikingly different? And what about them has such a hold on the public? Hi guys, welcome back to our podcast where we talk about child victimization. Today we have two crazy cases to talk about. My name is Jillian Urar and I'm here with my two friends today. Do you guys want to introduce yourselves? Yeah, I'm Caroline Citron. I'm Sahara King and we're sophomore justice studies majors at James Madison University and we research child victimization. We're really excited to talk about this with you guys today and to advocate for child victimization. All right, let's get into it. Today we're going to be comparing two popular cases. One is a family abduction case and the other is a non-family abduction case. When doing our research on child victimization, we found two key definitions on this topic. For non-family abductions, David Finkelhorst defines a non-family abduction as any incident in which a non-family member tried to take, detain, or lure a child and if the action had been successful, the situation would have probably met the criteria for a completed non-family abduction. He talks about this in his article, Attempted Non-Family Abductions, Child Welfare. On the other hand, for family abductions, David Finkelhorst again cites the National Incident Studies of Missing, Abducted, Runaway, and Throwaway Children to define family abductions as one, the abductor attempted to conceal the taking or whereabouts of the child or to prevent contact with the child, two, the abductor transported the child out of the state, or three, evidence existed that the abductor intended to keep the child indefinitely or to affect custodial privileges permanently. It also estimated a broader scope definition in the two earlier versions of NSMAR that included taking or failing to return a child in violation of custody and keeping the child for a night. Pretty lengthy definitions. Next up, we're going to be talking about family abductions and we'll be talking about a famous case that is absolutely shocking. When researching this case, we also looked into certain family abduction characteristics. Again, according to David Finkelhorst in his article, Family Abduction in a National Sample of U.S. Children, family abductions are most common to occur to children under five. They are typically female and they are in lower socioeconomic status with divorced parents. This first case that we're talking about is about Elizabeth Fritzl, a young girl who was held captive in her own home by her father. Have you guys heard about this case at all? I know that there was like a Netflix episode special thing about it and that's the only time I've ever heard about it. I've heard about it briefly but not much and then after doing research, I think I've found out there's a lot more. Yeah, I think there's actually a movie about it called The Girl in the Basement. Yeah, it's really popular. So, like Jill was saying earlier, family abductions occur for a multitude of reasons and I think what makes this case so crazy and why it captivated so many people, I mean, you said there was like a Netflix special about it. I think the reason it was like that was because it was so different than most family cases. I mean, this family was not in crisis and this abduction seemed to come out of nowhere. So, there's a reason that this case did get so much attention. So, I'm just going to get into the details of it and then we'll go from there and stick with me because this case is crazy and it's really confusing. So, I'm just going to start from the very beginning. So, Elizabeth was born in Austria in April 1966 and she was born into a pretty normal family and that was obviously until August 28, 1984. So, she was 16 at this time and basically what happened was Elizabeth went missing from her family and a letter came to the house claiming that she grew bored of her life and that she ran away. And her father, Yusef, came to his wife with this letter and was like, Elizabeth ran away. I mean, he claimed that she was into cults. It was very odd. Like, he just like basically came up with this story that she ran away, she got bored of life and she was gone. And the reality of this was she was actually in the basement 20 feet below. What? Oh my gosh. No way. So, yeah, and like the cops came to the house obviously because the mother, I mean, the mother claimed she had no idea which we can discuss that later because, I mean, that's just kind of weird. Yeah, that doesn't sound, yeah, that doesn't sound very plausible. But, like an officer came to the house and like I was reading a lot of articles and it was like so chilling. It was like little did he know that Elizabeth like was 20 feet below him and like it just like was so creepy. So, Yusef had built some type of like bunker system in the basement and there was like, it was like soundproof, there was like a bathroom down there, there was like a bed. It was just basically a part of the basement separate from like the, I guess you'd say like main part of the basement. So, it was like hard to get to and like I don't, it seemed like the wife didn't know it was there. But, yeah, that's where our story starts. So, he was able to abduct her by putting an ether soaked towel over her mouth. Isn't that like chloroform that people use to kidnap other people? Yeah, I just think it's like a chemical that makes people pass out. So, he did that to like I guess like subdue her and then brought her downstairs and tragically this is like horrible and it's also not common in non-family cases. He did this for sexual purposes. So, he unfortunately raped and impregnated her multiple times during these years which is so horrible and he did this like over and over again. So, when his like wife thought he was working downstairs, she claimed in interviews that he was like such a hardworking man and that every time she would go downstairs like he was always just like working really hard. I mean, I don't know. What do you guys think about that? Like, I don't, like, it's odd. Like, it's really, really weird. I feel like there's just no way that the wife has no idea. There's no way that's going on under your roof and if you're really looking for your daughter like you claim you are, there's no way. Yeah, no, I totally agree. Yeah, especially because like she had, you're telling me that she didn't go in the basement looking for him once and he weirdly wasn't there but he said, like you knew he was in the basement. Yeah. You go down there and he's not there. Yeah, because he's in one of like the back rooms. And you're like, what? Yeah, it was very odd. She said that he would sleep down there and it was just very, very weird. So, he would rape her and he impregnated her seven times. Oh my God. Yeah, so the first time she miscarried, then she got pregnant again with a female, then pregnant again with a male and then she had five more children with him which is just insane. And all of this occurred over 26 years which I think that that's also one of the most shocking parts of this case. And again, this is very unusual for family cases just because of how long this happened for and how the mom had no idea and the parents were still together. It's just very, very unusual. So, the other weird part about this was he would take the children upstairs, some of them, not all of them. He would take some of the children upstairs and leave them at the door or in like a nearby bush and claim it was Elizabeth's children that were dropped off at the house. So, he would claim to his wife that she was living somewhere else and getting pregnant and like dropping the kids off for them which is just insane. And she believed it. She didn't even question it. I mean, it's just very, very crazy. So, she was finally able to escape when her oldest fell ill and she convinced Yusef to take her to the hospital and to visit the child. And when he released Elizabeth, the staff alerted the police because it was very suspicious, her arrival, and he was finally taken into custody and was sentenced to life. Thank God. But he is, I just found this out, under Austrian law, he is eligible for parole actually last month. But I don't think anything has happened with that which is great. And I mean, this case is insane, definitely out of the ordinary for family abductions as I've mentioned multiple times. And what is interesting about family versus non-family abduction cases is that non-family ones are usually the ones that get the most attention. And it's mainly due to the nature of these kidnappings. They're done usually by strangers, although it can be an acquaintance. But they are usually pretty horrifying, motivated by sexual assault. And most cases of non-family are where a child is taken very far, or I'm sorry, not very far, for not very long, sexually assaulted and let go. So there are the rare cases which are particularly terrifying in which a child disappears at the hands of a stranger for an extended period of time, which leads us to our next discussion of Elizabeth Smart. That case is absolutely insane. The next case that we're going to be talking about is a little less complex, but still pretty messed up. This is a non-family case. So before I go into that, or Sahara will go into that for you guys, but beforehand, I'm going to talk about the statistics of non-family cases. When we were doing this research, we found that according to David Finkelhor in his article Attempted Non-Family Abductions, Child Welfare, these abductions typically happen to upper income white boys and girls, so they're kind of equally susceptible. They're usually between the ages of 4 to 11, and their parents are not separated. Usually their families are intact. And they are almost always perpetrated by a complete stranger. In the study with this article, they were all complete strangers in the sample size. And these strangers take them typically non-forcefully, which is not the case for this next one that we're looking at, but we'll talk about that. And many of these children that are abducted are left with severe psychological harm. So we're going to be talking about that in the next case involving Elizabeth Smart. So Elizabeth Ann Smart was born in Salt Lake City, Utah on November 3, 1987. And on June 4, 2002, she was 14 years old. And Smart had attended her end of school year award ceremony with her family. And later that night, about an hour after midnight, she was taken from her room that she shared with her sister, Mary Catherine. And the man that had come into their bedroom had threatened Smart with a knife and told her that if she didn't come with him, he would kill Elizabeth's entire family. And the kidnapper's name was Brian David Mitchell, and his wife, Wanda Breeze, took Smart to a camp in the forest. Mitchell had believed he was a prophet. And after performing a bizarre wedding ceremony, he had raped her. Mitchell and Breeze held Smart captive for nine months, and they moved her between Utah and California. And during that nine months, Smart was abused, raped, starved, and drugged daily for the entire time. Smart's younger sister, Mary Catherine, had pretended to be asleep during her sister's kidnapping. And she helped ID Mitchell as the kidnapper and former handyman for the Smarts. See, that part's crazy to me. Yeah. I guess he wasn't like a complete stranger to them. It was like an acquaintance, which is so crazy. You let somebody into your house just to like pick something and then... That's insane. Yeah. So on March 12, 2003, a passerby recognized Mitchell and Smart and had called the police. Smart was returned to her family that evening. Mitchell's prosecution stretched for years, and he was eventually found guilty of his crimes and was sentenced to life in prison. His wife, Wanda Breeze, was sentenced to 15 years for her part in the crimes that she helped Mitchell commit. Wow. That's crazy. And wait, how long was she held for? Nine months. Nine months. So it's not as long as Brickville's case, but still pretty long. I mean, 24 years. Yeah. 23 years or whatever it was. It's crazy. Yeah. Both of these cases are super unnerving and very upsetting to look into, but nevertheless, they're super important to research to advocate for these girls and anyone else impacted by an attempted abduction. When looking at the similarities and differences, we can see that the nature of these two cases is similar in the sense that they both got raped and forcefully put into captivity. However, Smart was taken by a stranger, well, almost a stranger, whereas Fritzl was taken from her own father and held captive in her own home. Fritzl's case is much more complex than Smart's, as she was held captive for many years and even had children with her father. To this day, both of these girls spend a lot of time advocating for their cause to bring awareness to self-defense and other ways to protect yourself. This goes to show that there's not really any stereotypical kidnappings, but there's a lot of factors that play into these cases. This just goes to show how kidnapping doesn't always happen by a stranger on the street. It could be your family, somebody that you trust, and somebody that your parents also trust. And I think that kind of makes it worse because it's somebody that you trust and somebody that could easily take advantage of you. And I think it's just a good reminder to always be careful and never let your guard down with anyone. Just always be on your toes. That was our comparison of family and non-family abductions and a brief look into the Elizabeth Fritzl and Elizabeth Smart cases. Thank you guys for tuning in. We hope you learned something. And don't forget to stay vigilant. All right, we'll see you guys next time. Bye, guys. Bye.