Imagine, if you can, that you’re sitting in your bedroom at night trying to finish a few last emails when you hear a voice say, “Hey!” You disregard it because you live in a duplex and have neighbors who frequently have friends over. You wander into your sister’s room to say good night. When you return to your bedroom, a strange man is coming in through your window.
“Hey, girl,” he says in a raspy, druggy voice. “I’m coming in.”
And he does. He comes in. And he has a knife.
That’s what happened to Bre. In the next moment, she was fighting for her life, and in the six minutes that followed, her life was forever altered.
And now I’ve asked her to meet me at the public library, which is more like homeless central. I’m sorry, but I can’t be politically correct right now; I have to be firmly on Bre’s side today.
Bre waves when she sees me. She is strikingly pretty, with an engaging smile. I’m surprised to find that she is so petite. How could she have survived such a brutal attack? There’s nothing about her that says victim. Not a whiff of fear. She has the posture and stride of a woman who has taken her life back. I know immediately that we’re going to be friends.
“Are you okay with…” I look around uncertainly, but Bre waves off my concern.
“I just thought, Hey, if Elizabeth Smart can walk through here, so can I.”
We laugh and start talking like we’ve known each other for ten years. It feels like we’ve been chatting for only a few minutes when my phone rings. It’s my mom, calling to tell me that Chloé is tired and I should come pick her up. I look at my watch. “Oh, dear. It’s been over an hour already, but we haven’t even begun talking about the reason I asked to meet in the first place.” We both laugh at that. All I can do is beg to reschedule—and not at the public library. Bre graciously agrees to meet at my house, where Chloé will be happy, and we’ll be fine, even if we run long.
Nonetheless, a week later, sitting out on my back deck enjoying the warm June sunshine, I’m determined to stick to my list of questions.
“Bre, what was your life like earlier on the day you were attacked?”
“I was excited,” she says. “My sister, Kayli, and I had just moved into a new house a week before that—in a safer neighborhood than we had been previously living in. I remember calling my mom two days after we moved in, telling her that I was just so excited and happy about my life. My business was about to take off, and I was super excited about it.”
Bre smiles, remembering the kind of details my mother recalls about the day I was taken, small things that loom large and precious when you realize that you were this close to losing it all. It makes me think about how oblivious we can be at times—myself included. Life sometimes feels like it’s going along smoothly, and suddenly, something sneaks up on you from behind and takes a big bite out of you. How can a person feel safe after that? Bre and I agree: Home always meant sanctuary, and the thought of someone invading that sanctuary unbidden was abhorrent. It was easy to push that thought away and think, That would never happen to me.
“Kayli had just fallen asleep,” says Bre. “I heard a man’s voice. Hey, girl. I’m coming in. I looked over and there was this bald man—shirtless—coming through my window. And I automatically thought, He’s going to rape me. So I jumped off my bed and ran towards him to try and push him out the window, but by the time I got to the window, he was already in. He came in headfirst and then was standing back up when I got to him, so we met face-to-face. I remember putting my arms up above my face and saying, ‘Please no, please no,’ and then he just started hitting me, so I started hitting him back. I got on my knees and started hitting him where you’re supposed to hit a man. I’m punching this man in the groin as hard as I can. He’s supposed to fall down, curl up into the fetal position, and I can run away. But he didn’t even flinch.”
She laughs a sharp, unsteady laugh. “Of all the thoughts I could have in that moment, I thought, Wow, every boy I have ever known is a liar, or is seriously exaggerating how bad it hurts to be hit in the groin. But then I realized that he was on drugs. He told me to shut up and cooperate. I told him I wasn’t going to cooperate. I thought if I could get him out into our dining room, there’s a big window, so maybe a neighbor would see us. I tried to pull him out of my room, and he was getting really angry. He shoved his hand over my mouth and pushed me up against my door and said, ‘Cooperate with me or I’m going downstairs to get your little sister.’ That’s when the fight got really ugly.”
Bre stops herself, because the story has begun to tumble out of order, the blur of moment-by-moment memory tangled with details she vaguely realized at the time or learned in the aftermath: That this man had been watching them. That he was on crystal meth. That he was twice her size and armed with a knife. Fueled by adrenaline and sheer terror, she thrashed on animal instinct, clawing and kicking the intruder as he dragged her from her room to the kitchen.
“I don’t know how to explain it,” says Bre. “I guess it kind of felt like slow motion, like it went on forever, and…” She shakes her head. “Do you want me to go on with this?”
“If you want to.” I leave it up to her. Whenever I speak with anyone, I always want to remain respectful and never push people too far or force them to talk about things they aren’t ready to talk about.
But Bre is surprisingly calm as she goes on. “Physically, I couldn’t scream—and I was trying to. I remember thinking, I don’t want Kayli to see him. I don’t want Kayli to see him. But then I saw Kayli running up the stairs just swinging her arms, and she was fighting from the very get-go, screaming at him—they were screaming at each other. The man lifted his leg and kicked Kayli down the stairs. Her body didn’t hit the stairs once. The only thing that stopped her body was her head going through the wall. Her head literally went into the other room—and this was the only wall in our house that wasn’t made of brick. He was so strong. I just thought, It’s done. But then I realized I still had my phone in my hand. So I shouted, ‘Siri! Call 911!’ And Siri said back to me—and I’m not joking—‘I’m sorry, Bray. I don’t understand.’ I was like, you’ve got to be kidding me! First of all, my name is Breeeee, not Braaaay, and second of all—now is not the time to not understand. Siri should always understand 911.”
Bre’s bang-on impersonation of Siri gives us both an opportunity to laugh, to take a breath and break the tension. But seriously, I couldn’t agree more with Bre: Siri should always understand 911.
“Siri did finally come through and call 911,” she says. “I saw the little timer start on the screen, so I knew the phone had been answered, but I couldn’t hear if anyone was talking or listening. I just kept yelling our address.”
This is the kind of incredibly quick thinking that can save a life. Kayli shouted at Siri too. The attacker was confused, pausing for a moment, asking, “Who are you talking to?” But then the battle raged on. From the kitchen, Bre and the intruder tumbled down the stairs to the basement, where Kayli beat him with a metal pipe, and Bre kicked and punched. For a moment he was able to wrench them both into a headlock, rasping, “Damn … I didn’t think you were going to be this strong.” Then Kayli broke free. Bre says a strange calm came over her when she realized that the man had the knife in his hand.
“I said, ‘Kayli, he has a knife,’ and then again, ‘He has a knife.’ I was so calm, she stopped screaming. I could tell for the first time she was scared.”
Bre told her sister to go for help. Kayli ran up the stairs, out of the house and into the street, leaving Bre in the basement with the attacker, who began stabbing her. He plunged the knife into her stomach and thigh, punching down hard enough to leave deep bruises around the jagged wounds.
Looking at Bre now—petite, slender, a featherweight—it’s hard to imagine how she managed to survive. But here she is, telling me what happened calmly, even casually. She’s mentioned multiple times already that it was her sister who was the fighter and that she was the one who was scared, but I d
isagree; she had to be a fighter to survive everything she’s telling me.
“It was dark. He fell on his back, and I fell on top of him, my back pressed against his chest. I was only wearing my underwear, and I remember feeling so disgusted that I was with this person in such an intimate position. I felt so violated. He lifted his legs over my legs in some kind of wrestling hold. There was nothing I could do with my lower body. I tried pulling his arm down to try to get the knife away from my neck, but I will never forget the feeling of the cold blade and his flexed hand up against my throat. I thought, This is really it. There’s no way he is going to miss slitting my throat. I was able to turn my head a fraction of an inch, and I saw black-booted feet descending the stairs.”
While Bre struggled with the intruder, Kayli had run down the street, screaming. Officer Ben Hone heard her. He hadn’t been dispatched by 911; he was returning home after following up on some other business in the neighborhood. Even with his windows rolled up, the air-conditioning on, a K-9 in the car, and music playing, he could hear Kayli screaming for help. As he got out of his car, Kayli changed her screams from “Help!” to “He’s stabbing my sister! He’s stabbing my sister!” Officer Hone ran back down the street with her, calling for backup as he charged into the house and down the stairs to the basement.
“I heard him say, ‘Salt Lake City Police! Drop the knife!’ I never felt so relieved in my life.” Bre bites her lip. “Only, my attacker did not drop the knife. The officer repeated, ‘Salt Lake City Police! Drop the knife!’ Two more times. My attacker still didn’t drop the knife. He whispered, ‘I’m going to kill you. This is it.’ As he extended his arm to slit my neck, his head moved out from behind mine. That’s when Officer Hone shot him in the head.”
Listening to Bre talk quietly about all the procedural details that followed, I feel the numb horror she and Kayli must have felt as they waited for the ambulance, bleeding and shivering on the porch outside the house where the stranger lay dead. She makes a wry observation now about herself and her little sister, whose pajamas tend to be somewhat racier than Bre’s: “The two of us sitting on the front porch looked as different as humanly possible—it was like Little House on the Prairie meets Sex and the City.”
Again, I’m amazed at how Bre uses a moment of laughter to lighten the intensity of the conversation. We’ve all listened to and read books about gunfights. We’ve seen action movies and shoot-’em-up adventures on television. We’ve certainly seen and heard gunfire reported on the news, but I couldn’t imagine the feeling of a bullet whizzing just an inch or two away from my own head, and Bre confirms that it was all a little surreal. The scene seems like something out of a James Bond movie: a fistfight, a metal pipe, a knife, and then finally a bullet to the head. Do we really live in a civilized society when we find that entertaining? Or is the primitive human barely concealed under a civilized façade? Do we watch that sort of thing on TV so we can keep it at a distance rather than seriously consider what we would do in a physical “kill or be killed” situation?
Thankfully, most of us will never face that moment. It’s terrifying to think about human predators that live and hunt in our world and prey on innocent people who are smaller and physically not as strong as they are. But it’s comforting to know that size doesn’t matter. No matter how much larger than you your attacker is, statistically, you do have a better chance of survival if you fight back. Bre gives me confidence that small is mighty, and that we can give ourselves literally a “fighting” chance to survive.
Every time I speak, I talk about how each one of us goes through his or her own trials. I try to tell people that it’s not what happens to us that makes us who we are, but how we react, the choices we make moving forward. It doesn’t matter what our current struggle is; it’s what we do about it. But there’s a long road between knowing that and putting it into practice. Bre’s situation definitely is not normal—it is extreme—yet here she is sitting across from me, happy and moving forward. She’s even able to find some humor in everything that has happened to her.
“At first it controlled me,” Bre admits. “At first I was playing the victim role, which I deserved to, but it came to a point where I couldn’t function. It was controlling every aspect of my life. I’m a very independent person—at least I was before. I’ve traveled, I’ve lived abroad by myself, I’ve done so many things alone, and all that was taken away in one night—in six minutes, to be precise. It controlled me until I realized I needed to make a decision to take my life back. Up until that moment, I wasn’t sleeping at night. My dad would stay up with me all night, and then I would sleep in the daytime when my parents were around and I felt safe. I didn’t want to shower because I would have to close my eyes. And I felt sorry that because of me, someone was shot.”
This throws me for a loop. “Wait. You felt sorry for him?”
“I felt guilty that he was killed because of me. Obviously, with time … well, that’s irrational. Of course you’re not guilty. But in the moment, I felt like it was 100 percent my fault.”
“Was there a moment,” I ask, “or was there something that happened that made you realize, ‘This wasn’t my fault. I don’t have to feel this guilt’?”
“Yeah.” She nods, knowing exactly the moment I’m talking about. “I had been studying a talk called ‘Choose to Believe’ by Elder L. Whitney Clayton in the Mormon Church’s spring session of General Conference in 2015, and it kind of came back to me, just like—Whoa, what am I doing? It woke me up. It wasn’t my choice to come in through that window. That wasn’t me. And yeah, my attacker’s choices affected me, but they don’t have to anymore. As soon as I realized that, it’s like something clicked, and I haven’t felt guilty since then. There was another thing: comparing his choices with my officer’s choices. Why am I so focused on his choices and how they’re affecting me? Why don’t I focus on Officer Hone’s choices and how they affected me instead?”
I’d never thought about that sort of focus as a conscious choice, but I immediately saw the power in her decision.
“What about Kayli?” I ask. “How has this affected her?”
“It affected us differently. It happened Wednesday morning at 12:01. She went back to work on Monday. She doesn’t want to talk about it. She’s ready to move on, which is great, and I was envious of that, because that was not my reaction. For a long time, I was comparing our reactions and saying there must be something wrong with me, because I couldn’t get over it. I needed to make the decision to reclaim my life. As soon as I knew that I was going to live, that my sister was okay, and that my attacker was dead, I thought my fight was over, and then I realized that my fight had only begun. There was a mental fight and emotional fight as well as the physical fight. I already knew the importance of self-defense, but people would tell me, ‘You should’ve clawed his eyes out’ or ‘You should’ve punched him in the groin.’”
I cringe at that, having heard a thousand similar comments since I came home. You should have run faster. You should have screamed louder. You should have kicked him where the sun don’t shine. People say these things, I think, to reassure themselves that they could never be victimized in a similar situation. What happened to you could never happen to them because they would get out of it with some quick-thinking maneuver. This “Choose Your Own Adventure” outcome feeds the fantasy that we can always control what happens to us, and that fantasy is a lot less scary than the old proverb “There but for the grace of God go I.”
“I was finally like, you have got to be kidding me,” Bre huffs, frustrated. “If people are doing this with me right now, what are they doing with people who are suffering mental illnesses, emotional pain, or eating disorders?”
“So what did you do about it?” I ask.
“I met with my detective, and he told me only 20 percent of women fight back; 80 percent of women are raped and/or murdered because they don’t. So I’ve started Fight Like Girls. My goal is to help raise awareness for other girls to keep fighting.
Fight Like Girls will be a place where anyone can get resources to keep fighting whatever it is that they’re fighting, and to let people know that self-defense isn’t just a physical defense. That you need to be defending yourself in every single way that you can be. It’s self-defense for a reason, not ‘body’ defense.”
* * *
When I was kidnapped, I developed a thin shell around myself, trying to protect myself inside. Whenever Mitchell raped me, whenever he and Barzee hurt me or forced me to do things I didn’t want to do, my self-defense was to retreat inside my shell. It was like I just disconnected from reality, and many times that is how I survived. Whether or not you physically fight back, you do what is instinctual, and for me, that was disconnecting and hiding in my shell. I did that while I was kidnapped, and I did that after I was rescued whenever I felt threatened.
One Sunday morning just a few weeks after I was rescued and returned home, my family and I were at church. I had been fighting a cold for a few weeks, and my nose was running like Niagara Falls. I excused myself from the congregation and went to the ladies’ bathroom to try to find some relief in blowing my nose. A woman followed me in and stood in front of the door with her foot wedged to the bottom of the door so that no one could come in. She was wearing lots of beads draped around her neck, lots of big rings on her fingers, a long skirt, and bulky shoes. She began by telling me that her father had kidnapped her, and that after she had gotten away from her father, she had met Brian David Mitchell. She said that she knew him, knew that he would never hurt anyone. She started peppering me with ugly questions. “You really loved Brian David Mitchell, didn’t you? You really ran away, didn’t you?”
I was a young girl who’d just been through nine months of hell. Now, just when I thought I was in a safe place, this weird, scary woman was in my face, slinging these obscene questions, demanding answers. I simply shut down. The only self-defense method I knew was to retreat back inside myself and disconnect. I just stood there, frozen. But my sister came to my rescue. Mom had sent Mary Katherine to look for me when I didn’t come back after a few minutes. Mary Katherine, who was a scrappy little eleven-year-old, rammed the door as hard as she could, pushing the woman aside and giving me my chance to escape. When I got back to where the rest of my family was sitting, the meeting was almost over. I sat next to my mother, a hard knot in my stomach as I briefly told her what had happened.
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