text: Nearly nine years after being kidnapped and held in a state of sexual slavery she describes as "my nine months of hell", Elizabeth Smart addressed her former captor face-to-face in a packed Salt Lake City courtroom, just moments before he was sentenced to life in prison. 
   
   Brian David Mitchell, the homeless street preacher convicted of kidnapping Smart, sang a hymn and gently rocked in his chair as Elizabeth's father Ed and then Elizabeth herself took turns addressing him. 
   
   "I hope at some time in your life you find what you have done is wrong," said Ed Smart. "Whether during your time on earth or in eternity, you're going to have to face the guilt." 
   
   Next, Elizabeth slowly walked to a podium to pick up a microphone before calmly turning to face Mitchell, who continued singing. It was the first time the 23-year-old has directly addressed Mitchell, who did not appear to look at her as she spoke. 
   
   "I don't have very much to say to you," Elizabeth Smart began. "I know exactly what you did. I know that you know what you did was wrong. You did it with a full knowledge. I also want you to know that I have a wonderful life now." 
   
   "You took away nine months of my life that can never be returned," she continued. "But in this life or next, you will have to be held responsible for those actions, and I hope you are ready for when that time comes." 
   
   Addressing reporters outside the courthouse after the hearing, Elizabeth appeared relieved. 
   
   "Today is the ending of a long chapter and the very beginning of a new chapter," she said, her father standing by her sid. 
   
   Smart said she recently completed a mission for the Mormon church and plans to continue working as a child advocate to help stop and prevent kidnapping and sexual abuse. 
   
   Before Wednesday's sentencing hearing got underway, Elizabeth sat with her parents, brothers and sisters in the front row of the packed courtroom. She smiled and seemed in good spirits. 
   
   When Mitchell was brought into the courtroom wearing a tan prison jumpsuit, handcuffs and shackles, Smart sat stone-faced, staring straight ahead. 
   
   Mitchell began singing as soon as he walked in, providing a bizarre background soundtrack for the remainder of the proceedings until he was led out. 
   
   The sentence of life in prison was handed down by U.S. District Court Judge Dale Kimball. Before sentencing, Kimball asked Mitchell if he had anything to say. Mitchell continued singing and did not answer. 
   
   Today's proceedings are part of a final chapter in a story that began in the early morning hours of June 5, 2002, when a 14-year old Smart was kidnapped at knifepoint from her family's Salt Lake City home. 
   
   During the four-week federal trial last fall, Smart testified that she endured "nine months of hell" that started when Mitchell forced her to become one of his wives. She said she was raped and sexually assaulted almost daily and made to smoke marijuana, drink alcohol and watch pornography. 
   
   Smart said she was also tethered to a tree and told she'd be killed if she tried to escape. 
   
   Smart testified that she once came agonizingly close to being rescued when a Salt Lake City police detective saw her at a library with Mitchell and his now-estranged wife Wanda Barzee. 
   
   Smart was wearing a veil hiding her face. When the detective asked her to raise the veil, Mitchell objected on religious grounds. The detective eventually gave up and left. 
   
   "I felt like hope was walking out the door," Smart testified. "I was mad at myself that I didn't say anything. I was mad at myself for just not taking the chance, that I just felt like I was so close, and I felt terrible. I felt terrible that the detective hadn't pushed harder, that he had just walked away." 
   
   Smart's physical ordeal ended on March 12, 2003, when she was spotted walking down a Salt Lake City street with Mitchell and Barzee. 
   
   Barzee eventually pleaded guilty to her role in the kidnapping and in May 2010 was sentenced to 15 years in prison. 
   
   The case dragged on in state courts for years amid legal fights over Mitchell's mental competency. 
   
   He was often removed from courtroom proceedings for singing hymns or screaming at judges. 
   
   During his federal trial last fall, his attorneys argued Mitchell was not guilty by reason of insanity. A jury rejected that argument and in December found him guilty. 
   
   ABC News producer James Nelson.contributed to this report. ||||| SALT LAKE CITY (AP) -- Elizabeth Smart finally got her chance Wednesday to confront the street preacher convicted of holding her captive and raping her for months when she was just 14. Now 23, she stood tall in the courtroom - stoic, with an even voice and a strength Brian David Mitchell clearly lacked. 
   
   Mitchell, frail and skinny with a long, peppery white beard, sang hymns softly and closed his hollow eyes, just as he did throughout his trial, just as he would moments later as the judge gave him two life sentences without parole. That did not stop Smart from looking right at him and coolly speaking her piece. 
   
   It took her about 30 seconds. 
   
   "I don't have very much to say to you. I know exactly what you did," said Smart, wearing a houndstooth checked skirt, an ivory jacket and pearls. "I know that you know that what you did was wrong. You did it with full knowledge ... but I have a wonderful life now and no matter what you do, you will never affect me again. 
   
   "You took away nine months of my life that can never be returned. You will have to be held responsible for those actions, whether it's in this life or the next, and I hope you are ready for when that time comes." 
   
   Mitchell's sentencing closed a major legal chapter in the heartbreaking ordeal that stalled for years after he was declared mentally ill and unfit to stand trial in state court. A federal jury in December unanimously convicted the 57-year-old of kidnapping and unlawful transportation of a minor across state lines for sex. 
   
   When the judge asked if he had anything to say, Mitchell, whose hands and feet were bound, kept right on singing. His bizarre demeanor changed just once during the hearing: As he was sentenced, he sang louder. 
   
   Outside the courthouse, a beaming Smart, now a Brigham Young University music student, told reporters that the sentencing "is the ending of a very long chapter and the beginning of a very beautiful chapter for me." She said she wants to work with other crime victims and lend her support to the cause of missing children. 
   
   Smart was snatched from her Salt Lake City bedroom by knifepoint in the early hours of June 5, 2002. The massive search to find the blond-haired, blue-eyed girl riveted the nation, as did her improbable recovery while walking with her captor on a suburban Salt Lake City-area street on March 12, 2003. 
   
   At trial, she testified in a steady, clear voice about her "nine months of hell." Mitchell whisked her away to his camp in the foothills near the family home. She was stripped of her favorite red pajamas, draped in white, religious robes and forced into a polygamous marriage with Mitchell. She was tethered to a metal cable strung between two trees and subjected to near-daily rapes while being forced to use alcohol and drugs. 
   
   Mitchell, who outlined his religious beliefs in a rambling 27-page manifesto he called "The Book of Immanuel David Isaiah," took Smart to California for five of the months she was held captive. She recalled being forced to live homeless, dress in disguises and stay quiet or lie about her identity if ever approached by strangers or police. She said he threatened her life and the lives of her family every day. 
   
   U.S. District Judge Dale Kimball said Mitchell deserved a life sentence because the facts of the case were "unusually heinous and degrading." 
   
   Carlie Christensen, U.S. attorney for Utah, said the resolution was long overdue for Smart and her family. "It is a measure of justice for Elizabeth and it will certainly ensure Brian David Mitchell will never inflict such intolerable and unspeakable cruelty on anyone else again," Christensen said. 
   
   The defense waived its closing remarks before sentencing. Parker Douglas, a member of Mitchell's defense team, said outside the courthouse that the sentence was not unexpected. 
   
   "I wish Elizabeth Smart and her family the best. I hope they get to move on," Douglas said. He added that the decision about whether to appeal depends largely on what Mitchell wants. 
   
   Though Smart testified at Mitchell's trial, she never addressed him directly then because he was removed from the courtroom each day after singing hymns to disrupt the proceedings. On Wednesday he sang songs including "Come Come Ye Saints" and "O Come O Come Emmanuel." 
   
   "Exploitation of religion is not a defense," Smart's father, Ed, said at Mitchell's sentencing, in a statement that was even shorter than his daughter's. "You put Elizabeth through nine months of psychological hell." 
   
   The facts of the case have never been in dispute, but defense attorneys have said Mitchell's actions were tainted by mental illness and long-held delusional beliefs that he had been commanded by God to fulfill important prophecies. 
   
   Elizabeth Smart, who recently returned from a Mormon church mission in France, described her captor as vulgar and self-serving when she testified at trial. She said she believed he was driven by his desire for sex, drugs and alcohol, not by any sincere religious beliefs. 
   
   "Nine months of living with him and seeing him proclaim that he was God's servant and called to do God's work and everything he did to me and my family is something that I know that God would not tell somebody to do," Smart said during the trial. 
   
   Mitchell was deemed competent for a federal trial, though a parallel state case – where he remains charged with six felonies – stalled after a judge twice determined he was unfit and rejected a petition for forced treatment. A key witness for federal prosecutors, New York forensic psychiatrist Dr. Michael Welner, concluded that Mitchell was "malingering" or faking a mental disorder to avoid prosecution. 
   
   Defense attorneys maintain Mitchell needs psychiatric attention and asked the judge to recommend incarceration in a federal prison hospital rather than a standard prison. 
   
   Wanda Barzee, his estranged wife and co-defendant in the case, is already serving a 15-year sentence in a federal prison hospital in Texas for her role in the kidnapping. 
   
   Barzee, 65, pleaded guilty to federal kidnapping and unlawful transportation charges in November 2009. Upon her release, Barzee is expected to be transferred to the Utah State Prison to serve a sentence on a conviction in a companion case involving the attempted abduction in 2002 of Smart's cousin. 
   
   Mitchell's ex-wife, Debbie Mitchell, praised the Smart family for their courage. 
   
   "There's some closure to it, knowing he'll never molest another child," she said. "We've never heard him say he's sorry. He got caught. We never heard him apologize or say he regretted his actions." 
   
   Rebecca Woodridge, Mitchell's former stepdaughter, said she wants to thank Elizabeth Smart and confront her stepfather, who she says abused her for five years when she was a child. 
   
   Woodbridge said she talked to Mitchell Tuesday and asked if he had anything to say to the public. He told her that he doesn't think the world is ready to hear what he has to say. 
   
   ___ 
   
   Associated Press Writer Chi-Chi Zhang contributed to this report.
target: – Brian David Mitchell got a life sentence today for kidnapping Elizabeth Smart, but she got the last word in court. Confronting him for the first time, she kept it short and sweet: "I don't have very much to say to you. I know exactly what you did. I know that you know what you did was wrong. You did it with a full knowledge. I also want you to know that I have a wonderful life now. You took away nine months of my life that can never be returned. But in this life or next, you will have to be held responsible for those actions, and I hope you are ready for when that time comes." Mitchell did not appear to look at her during her statement, notes ABC News. He just kept rocking in his chair and singing to himself. Click for more details.