Former kidnap victim Elizabeth Smart marries in Hawaii

Elizabeth Smart, who was kidnapped at the age of 14 from the Utah home and held her for what she described as "nine months of hell," exchanged vows on Saturday with her boyfriend last year in a private wedding in Hawaii, her cousin told Reuters.

Smart, 24, and Matthew Gilmour, whom she met while she was serving a religious mission in Europe for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, tied the knot in the Mormon temple overlooking the Pacific on the North Shore of Oahu, her uncle, Tom Smart, said .

A spokesman for Elizabeth Smart, Chris Thomas, added in a statement that the couple were accompanied by a small group of close family, and he described them as "beaming" as they left the house on the way to the reception and luau.

The couple were going on "extended honeymoon" after the festivities of the day, Thomas said. According to People magazine, Gilmour is 22

Smart, now an advocate for missing children and the occasional television news commentator, announced last month that she was engaged to be married with wedding tips for early summer.

But before the media attention that was growing "increasingly invasive," Smart decided about a week ago as "the best way to avoid significant interference was to change the wedding plans and to get married in a ceremony outside the program outside of Utah," Thomas said.

Smart was kidnapped at knife point from her bedroom in June 2002 with a homeless street preacher Brian David Mitchell, and was repeatedly raped and forced to wander with Capto her from town to town for nine months.

She was released after spotted by passers-by in Salt Lake City suburb in 2003. Her husband shocked Americans, and a great search for missing teen was exhaustive discussion in the U.S. media.

Mitchell was convicted in 2010 of kidnapping and unlawful transportation of minor across state lines to engage in sex. He was sentenced in May to life in prison.

Smart testified at Mitchell's trial, describing his time as a captive of the "nine months of hell."

Mitchell's wife, Wanda Barzee, was sentenced to 15 years in prison in 2010 after bath guilty to conspiracy and cooperating with prosecutors in a case against Mitchell.

ABC News in July announced that it had hired field, which has shown composure then release it from captivity, the contribution of stories about missing persons.