Kidnapping survivor Elizabeth Smart, who has written a memoir of her nine months in captivity, says she "didn't feel human" during the ordeal.
"How could I?" Smart asked during an exclusive interview with NBC News' Meredith Vieira, airing Friday at 10 p.m.
"I mean, here I was, a 14-year-old girl, ripped from my family, from my friends, from the people I loved. Being raped every day, not knowing when I'd be able to eat next, not knowing when I'd be able to drink next. And being chained to a tree."
Smart was abducted from her Salt Lake City bedroom in the dead of night of June 5, 2002. Religious fanatic Brian David Mitchell and his wife Wanda Barzee kept her tethered at a makeshift campsite, then spirited her to California.
She was repeatedly raped and threatened until the trio returned to Utah, where a passerby sensed something was amiss and called police.
With the help of Smart's testimony, Mitchell and Barzee were convicted. He is serving a life sentence and she is serving 15 years to life.
Their former captive, meanwhile, has gone on to create the Elizabeth Smart Foundation to help prevent crimes against children, gotten married and written an account of her abduction in "My Story," which will be published next week.
In her interview with Vieira she talks about how Mitchell and Barzee stripped her of human dignity.
"To her, I was a slave, and to him, I was an object," she said.
"I don't think there's anything worse you can do to a child."
Related:
Face to face with evil: Elizabeth Smart confronts her kidnapper
Bringing Elizabeth home: Smart family discusses terrifying experience