The trial of Brian David Mitchell in a US federal court for the abduction, rape, captivity and transportation across state lines of Elizabeth Smart is currently underway in Salt Lake City, Utah. Smart was 14 years old when she was taken from her family's Salt Lake City home at knifepoint, it is alleged, by Mitchell in 2002. She spent nine months as Mitchell's hostage and "plural wife" before being recognised and recovered in Sandy, a suburb of Salt Lake City.

Smart, now 23, is currently serving a mission in Paris for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints; she took time off to return home and testify against Mitchell. The Salt Lake Tribune has published transcripts of her testimony; they make for heartbreaking, nauseating and occasionally inspiring reading.

In a 2003 article in Sunstone, John-Charles Duffy documents both Latter-day Saints' desire to distance themselves from Mitchell, as well as Mitchell's thorough "Mormonness". Mormon belief is certainly well covered in the trial. For instance, Smart testified that Mitchell said that he needed additional wives who were Mormon "so they would have the basic LDS beliefs already" because "the LDS Church was the true church."

Mitchell also stipulated that his wives "needed to be young so they were still malleable".

Federal Prosecutor Felice Viti asked Smart, "During these discussions [of Mitchell's sexual abuse of Smart], did he ever mention whether the prophets had young wives?" The question refers to the fact that of the 30-plus wives generally established to have been married to Mormonism's founder Joseph Smith, two (Helen Mar Kimball and Nancy Mariah Winchester) were, like Smart, 14 – a fact many Mormons prefer to overlook.

Duffy notes that "Mitchell believes he is the divinely appointed prophetic successor to Joseph Smith." Comparisons of Mitchell to Smith are, therefore, unavoidable – and, I would argue, absolutely necessary.

Joseph Smith established a church in which an adult man can command reluctant teenage girls to marry him. (A note here: the practice of polygamy has been discontinued but not renounced by the LDS church. It remains part of their doctrine of celestial marriage.) Smith established a script by which men exert sexual and physical control over women, and Mitchell followed it.

According to Smart's testimony, Mitchell used both actual and threatened physical violence against her, his victim. Smith also used the threat of physical violence, though, usually, he made himself the potential recipient of it: he often claimed that if he disobeyed God's command to marry and have sex with many women, an angel with a fiery sword would execute him. In other words, he told women that if they didn't marry and consent to sex with him, they would be responsible for his death.

Smith was not above using another type of violence: spiritual violence. Smith sometimes threatened those who opposed his plural marriages – including the women he courted – with eternal damnation. The threats against his wife Emma Smith are especially grim. Given that Smith was revered by his followers as a prophet who spoke directly to God, these threats were thoroughly dire and utterly terrifying. Their impact and profundity cannot be overestimated: the psychological and supernatural scope of this spiritual violence exceeded any threat Mitchell was able to make against Smart.

A participant in an online discussion argued that comparisons of Mitchell and Smith should not be made because "equating the kidnapping and repeated rape of Elizabeth Smart by Mitchell to Joseph Smith is to trivialise her trauma". (As if trauma were a contest, and only those who suffer the most deserve our sympathy and respect; as if girls younger than 14 are not abducted, raped and forced into sexual slavery every single day.)The commenter added that while he believed people who made such comparisons might actually care about Smart's trauma, he did not believe that:

"To tell Elizabeth Smart that the man who raped her and the man who founded the religion that she just served a mission for (and whose religious teachings likely provided her a great deal of comfort and healing in response to her abuse) are equivalents is necessarily a productive way of showing it."

As I and countless others who have served missions for the LDS church before leaving it can testify, it is, indeed, harrowing to confront ways in which an institution you've loved and worked to support has harmed and betrayed you. That doesn't make it any less necessary in coming to terms with the reality of the harm done to you, and it can aid materially in your recovery from that harm.

In Trauma and the Memory of Politics, Jenny Edkins notes that "the modern state, then, is a contradictory institution: a promise of safety, security and meaning alongside a reality of abuse, control and coercion." The case of Elizabeth Smart shows that the very same can be said of religion.

Granted, Mitchell did not practise his religion in the same way that Smart practised hers. But many of their beliefs are related, and many of the means of abuse, control and coercion Mitchell used against Smart were scripted and practised by Joseph Smith – who also offered his followers a promise of safety, security and meaning. Indeed, Joseph Smith himself epitomises how one person can offer others "a promise of safety, security and meaning alongside a reality of abuse, control and coercion."

Given what Smart has gone through, I'm glad that she has found comfort where she can. But there are issues beyond her ordeal to consider, and concern for her must not prevent us from addressing them. As long as Mormonism is reluctant to confront the coercive, abusive elements of the doctrine of polygamy, which is, even today, a sacred part of Mormon canonical scripture, the LDS church will fail to fully make good on its "promise of safety, security and meaning" for many of its followers – particularly women, who are most vulnerable to the doctrine's coercion and abuse.

Discussion thread shortcut

The author of this piece, Holly Welker, has been participating in the conversation below as HollyWelker. This is an excerpt selected by a Cif editor:

Shermanator says:

I'm not a Mormon and I'm not an expert on the faith. However, it seems to me that this Mitchell dude is a crackpot. Every faith has its share of nuts, and it probably isn't fair to blame his behavior on the mainstream LDS church.

HollyWelker replies: