A guilty verdict finally ends Elizabeth Smart's ordeal

AP Photo: Elizabeth Smart pleased with guilty verdictElizabeth Smart's long ordeal is finally, hopefully, over. After five hours of deliberations, a federal jury convicted Brian David Mitchell of kidnapping Smart from her bed at knifepoint, holding her captive for nine months, and for repeatedly raping her during that captivity.

Smart and her family waited eight years for that verdict and she was smiling and pleased to hear it, according to news reports. "I hope that not only is this an example that justice can be served in America, but that it is possible to move on after something terrible has happened," she said alongside her mother after the verdict was announced.

Smart was 14 when she was kidnapped. She's 23 now, and gracefully, strongly moving on. She will return to a Mormon mission in Paris where she was working before the trial. Prosecutors credited her courageous, clear testimony for the outcome of the trial. "The beginning and the end of this story is attributable to a woman with extraordinary courage and extraordinary determination, and that's Elizabeth Smart," federal prosecutor Carlie Christensen said following the verdict.

In court, she described, hopefully for the last time publicly, how she woke up one night with a knife at her throat and being taken away by Mitchell to his camp in foothills not far from her family's Salt Lake City home. She testified how she was forced into a polygamous marriage with him, chained to a metal cable, and subjected repeatedly to rapes while being forced use drink alcohol and use drugs.

With the guilty verdict she sought in hand, Smart can now go back to living her life. The least she deserves.