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Elizabeth Smart using experience, celebrity to help crime victims

Posted at 10:23 PM, Nov 10, 2016
and last updated 2016-11-11 00:23:41-05

SALT LAKE CITY -- Elizabeth smart is using her experience and her celebrity to help crime victims around the country as a special correspondent for “Crime Watch Daily.”

As an advocate for missing children and crime survivors, Elizabeth Smart says part of the reason she joined Crime Watch Daily is that she knows firsthand how the spotlight and media can play a part in helping to solve crimes.

“When I’m asked to go out and interview these other victims, these other survivors, I just think that it's so important to share their stories,” Smart said. “Not just for their own case, but for all the other victims and survivors who are out there so they know that they're not alone. That they know they can do something about it."

The latest episode brings Smart face-to-face with Doctor David Cline, an Indiana fertility specialist accused of using his own sperm to allegedly impregnate more than 50 patients.

"To be so completely betrayed by this man, telling you one thing, but doing a complete other.... Knocking on his door, there was very much so, adrenaline,” Smart said.

During the episode, Smart and Doctor Cline exchange words.

Smart: "Don't you at least want to share a little bit. You don't feel like you owe an apology?"

Cline: “No ma'am."

Six of Cline's former patient's children learned of their ancestry through DNA testing, after Cline allegedly told some of his patients he used his own sperm whenever he didn't have a donor sample available.

"I used to beg my mom for a sister every year for Christmas, to give me a baby sister, and I have one,” one alleged victim said.

Smart was with Crime Watch Daily when some of Cline's children met for the very first time.

"I couldn't help but think of these women, and how would I feel if one of those women had been my mother, or if it had been me? I would be so angry and so violated,” Smart said.

One alleged victim said, "He was my doctor, and you just don't do that to your patient."

Crime Watch Daily airs weekday afternoons at 2:00 right here on Fox 13. Producers from the show tell us they look forward to doing many more stories with Elizabeth Smart.