Natascha Kampusch - abductor Wolfgang Priklopil

The Austrian teenager who survived more than eight years of captivity in an underground cell has vividly described her imprisonment, in a TV interview.
Natascha Kampusch, now 18, told state broadcaster ORF that thoughts of freedom had sustained her.

"I promised myself I would grow older, stronger and sturdier to be able to break free one day," she said.

Her captor, 44-year-old communications technician Wolfgang Priklopil, killed himself after her escape on 23 August.


'Claustrophobic'

In an interview watched by millions, Ms Kampusch described being imprisoned in a small, windowless basement beneath Priklopil's garage in the commuter town of Strasshof, 25km (15 miles) outside the capital Vienna.

"I was very distraught and very angry," she told ORF.

I knew when I fled that I was condemning him to death


In a handwritten statement read to journalists by a psychologist made available to her by the Austrian government, Ms. Kampusch, 18, gave a scant, matter-of-fact account of her everyday life in captivity, spoke of a psychological standoff with her captor and asked the public to wait until she was ready to talk more directly about her ordeal.

Her words, and the tale of how she got away from the man who seized her when she was 10, hinted at an intelligent, articulate young woman who managed somehow to educate herself and maintain a sense of optimism despite her isolation.

She seized her chance to flee on Wednesday when her captor told her to vacuum his car. When he walked off to escape the noise of the vacuum cleaner and make a cellphone call, she said, she slipped away.

She left the vacuum cleaner running to fool him into thinking she was still there, she said in her letter.

After a brief meeting with her parents last week, Ms. Kampusch said she was not yet ready to spend more time with them and had decided to remain in an undisclosed location for now, shielded by psychiatrists and lawyers.


She had her first contact with other teenagers over the weekend, said the Austrian authorities, who have made support services available. The meeting went smoothly, people who are helping to care for her have told the local news media.

“Of course it is true that my youth was different from that of many others,” Ms. Kampusch said, “but in principle I do not have the feeling that I have missed out on anything.”

The language in her letter, read by the psychologist, Max Friedrich, was clear and in parts powerfully expressive. Ms. Kampusch described her escape, her everyday life in captivity and her complex relationship with her captor, Wolfgang Priklopil, 44, a communications technician, who killed himself within hours of her escape by throwing himself in front of a train.

But she did not give any details of how he might have abused her over the years


“She has a vocabulary — it’s incredible,” Sabine Freudenberger, the first police officer to speak with Ms. Kampusch last week, said in an interview with ORF, Austria’s public broadcaster. “She said she just listened to the radio all day long. She is educated. She has become a highly intelligent woman.”

Monika Pinterits, a lawyer who is advising Ms. Kampusch, called the teenager “lovely, eloquent, smart, very, very positive and very educated,” ORF reported.

Many questions remain about what has been one of Austria’s most puzzling criminal mysteries.

Investigators are asking how a girl could have been hidden for so long from the eyes of neighbors, and they are trying to determine whether Mr. Priklopil had any accomplices. One witness to the kidnapping in March 1998 said Ms. Kampusch had been dragged into a white van by two men.


But Ms. Kampusch said Mr. Priklopil had been the only one involved.

“He did the kidnapping by himself; everything was already prepared,” she said in her letter.

What a sad storey this was but I dont see how she cannot be affected by it after all those years away from her parents and family.

An Austrian woman claims she was abused as a child by the man who kidnapped Natascha Kampusch and held her for more than eight years in a dungeon below his home.

Published: 9:05AM GMT 13 Jan 2009


Natascha Kampusch spent eight years locked in a cellar Photo: REUTERS The anonymous 31-year-old woman told Austrian television, Wolfgang Priklopil abused her in the summer of 1985 in the Vienna suburb of Strasshof while she was playing outside close to her family's vacation home.

She says Priklopil, who kidnapped Miss Kampusch in 1998 and held her in a windowless cell beneath his house in Strasshof until she escaped at the age of 18 in August 2006. Within hours, Priklopil committed suicide.



Natascha Kampusch kidnapping: Police seek second abductorThe latest woman, who was 7 at the time, said Priklopil forced her to sit on his lap and undressed her after offering her hazelnuts, showing her his new bike and telling her that he didn't have many friends.

"He also didn't treat me like a child but like a person of the same age bracket ... I had never met an adult like that," she said.

The woman, who is from the westernmost province of Vorarlberg, said she recognised Priklopil from photos published after Kampusch's dramatic escape and alerted authorities this past summer.

"I know what happened to me and I'll always stand by that... yes, it was this person – 100 per cent," she said.

The Vienna public prosecutor's office said last week that no investigation is planned because Priklopil is dead and the statute of limitations has expired on the new allegations.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/video/2008/may/30/kampusch

Austria cellar girl Natascha Kampusch hosts talk showKidnap victim dreamed of TV career as chat show host during the eight years she was held prisoner by Wolfgang Priklopil

Woman recalls eight-year kidnap horror
Yahoo!7 September 6, 2010, 5:40 pm

For eight years, she was held captive, tortured and forced to slave for her psychopath kidnapper. Now, Austrian woman Natascha Kampusch is set to reveal the full extent of her ordeal in an autobiography due for release soon.

In March 1998, a 10-year-old Kampusch was picked up from a street by a man who bundled her into a car, drove her to his house and then locked her in a "hermetically-sealed" concrete dungeon, according to the Daily Mail.

The windowless cellar was equipped with only a pallet bed, toilet and sink.

What followed were 3096 days of physical torture and psychological trauma.

It was not before August 2006 that Kampusch, then 18, managed to escape and revealed to the world her horrifying experiences.

According to Kampusch, her captor – who identified himself to her as Wolfgang Priklopil - made her slave and slog, forcing her to shave off her hair and work semi-naked around his house. 'I always wanted to have a slave," Priklopil would tell her.

She writes of being beaten up to 200 times a week until her "spine snapped" and was ordered to address her captor as 'Maestro' or 'My Lord'.

"He'd grab me by the throat, drag me to the sink, push my head underwater and squeeze my windpipe until I almost lost consciousness," she told the Daily Mail.

So massive was her intrinsic struggle for survival that Kampusch says she began "regressing to the age of four or five" and began counting on her captor for physical intimacy and affection.

"I'd only have to do what the kidnapper asked and everything would be all right. Everything would proceed as it always did: the bedtime ritual, my mother's hand on my duvet, the goodnight kiss, the quiet tiptoe out of the room," she writes.

"I was not to be afraid, everything was going to be all right if I did what I was told. He looked at me like a child eyeing his new toy, full of anticipation and at the same time uncertain what to do with it".

Priklopil also told her that demands for ransom had been rejected by her family and that they were better off without her.

Some of her most graphic recollections include being manacled to Priklopil and sleeping with him in the same bed.

"It wasn't about sex. The man who'd beat me and locked me in the cellar had something else in mind: he simply wanted something to cuddle," she writes.

Kampusch also recollects how he never let her out of his sight, spying on her even when she bathed and accompanying her to the toilet.

"As the weeks went by, he dominated me more and more. I wasn't allowed to look him directly in the face. I had to ask permission if I wanted to stand up, sit down, turn my head or speak. He even accompanied me to the loo."

Kampusch found a chance to escape in 2006 while she was cleaning Priklopil's car.
Priklopil, who has been identified as an ex-engineer, committed suicide shortly after she escaped.

Justiceforallkids wrote:
Woman recalls eight-year kidnap horror


For eight years, she was held captive, tortured and forced to slave for her psychopath kidnapper. Now, Austrian woman Natascha Kampusch is set to reveal the full extent of her ordeal in an autobiography due for release soon.

In March 1998, a 10-year-old Kampusch was picked up from a street by a man who bundled her into a car, drove her to his house and then locked her in a "hermetically-sealed" concrete dungeon, according to the Daily Mail.

The windowless cellar was equipped with only a pallet bed, toilet and sink.

What followed were 3096 days of physical torture and psychological trauma.

It was not before August 2006 that Kampusch, then 18, managed to escape and revealed to the world her horrifying experiences.

According to Kampusch, her captor – who identified himself to her as Wolfgang Priklopil - made her slave and slog, forcing her to shave off her hair and work semi-naked around his house. 'I always wanted to have a slave," Priklopil would tell her.

She writes of being beaten up to 200 times a week until her "spine snapped" and was ordered to address her captor as 'Maestro' or 'My Lord'.

"He'd grab me by the throat, drag me to the sink, push my head underwater and squeeze my windpipe until I almost lost consciousness," she told the Daily Mail.

So massive was her intrinsic struggle for survival that Kampusch says she began "regressing to the age of four or five" and began counting on her captor for physical intimacy and affection.

"I'd only have to do what the kidnapper asked and everything would be all right. Everything would proceed as it always did: the bedtime ritual, my mother's hand on my duvet, the goodnight kiss, the quiet tiptoe out of the room," she writes.

"I was not to be afraid, everything was going to be all right if I did what I was told. He looked at me like a child eyeing his new toy, full of anticipation and at the same time uncertain what to do with it".

Priklopil also told her that demands for ransom had been rejected by her family and that they were better off without her.

Some of her most graphic recollections include being manacled to Priklopil and sleeping with him in the same bed.

"It wasn't about sex. The man who'd beat me and locked me in the cellar had something else in mind: he simply wanted something to cuddle," she writes.

Kampusch also recollects how he never let her out of his sight, spying on her even when she bathed and accompanying her to the toilet.

"As the weeks went by, he dominated me more and more. I wasn't allowed to look him directly in the face. I had to ask permission if I wanted to stand up, sit down, turn my head or speak. He even accompanied me to the loo."

Kampusch found a chance to escape in 2006 while she was cleaning Priklopil's car.
Priklopil, who has been identified as an ex-engineer, committed suicide shortly after she escaped.

so much for maddie being alive and unharmed with a abductor and being treated likea princess!!!! i dont know how the mcanns and the pros can say that!!!!!!!!!!

Poor girl. I remember her being slated for not showing emotion or being cocky yet here you can see what she had to endure and why she was like that. Compare to the Mcs....

I'm so glad he threw himself under that train l really hope he felt every bone in his body break before he died.

If Maddie is alive and being held somewhere, she will not be out in public, at school, sitting in cafes, going to church, the park or enjoying the experience of making friends with other children. She would have to be in a place where no casual visitor might see her and notice her eye defect or get the chance to engage in conversation with a child who will have memories of her origin.

According to the M*A*S*H song, "Suicide is painless," but abduction and imprisonment certainly isn't.

and you know the Mcs like to brainwash the world into thinking Maddie has come to no harm....

Can anyone actually remember a child of Maddies age who was abducted by a childless person/couple who came to no harm?

I can only remember those two little babes in the 80's Alexandra ?? and another one - and they were BABIES taken because they couldn't talk!!

ETA: Alexandra Griffiths & Abbie Humphries

AnnaEsse wrote:If Maddie is alive and being held somewhere, she will not be out in public, at school, sitting in cafes, going to church, the park or enjoying the experience of making friends with other children. She would have to be in a place where no casual visitor might see her and notice her eye defect or get the chance to engage in conversation with a child who will have memories of her origin.

According to the M*A*S*H song, "Suicide is painless," but abduction and imprisonment certainly isn't.

exactly anna you can understand why i posted this it proves the alive and unharmed bit is bullshit!!!! we have known if maddie was abducted she would not be alive and unharmed this story proves our point!!!

There were, still are I believe, rumours and suspicions that the girl´s mother was involved.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/austria/1960552/Austria-Natascha-Kampusch-defends-mother-in-court.html

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/7402322.stm

http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2008/05/16/1210765107182.html


I don´t know if any of you have read the book "Girl in the Cellar" but I found it strange in view of the facts that the world press didn´t condemn and slander the Austrian police continually, all very strange.

THIS is what generally happens to small children who get taken away by paedophile abductors - unfortunately.



At least this poor wee lamb has a proper grave.

AnnaEsse wrote:If Maddie is alive and being held somewhere, she will not be out in public, at school, sitting in cafes, going to church, the park or enjoying the experience of making friends with other children. She would have to be in a place where no casual visitor might see her and notice her eye defect or get the chance to engage in conversation with a child who will have memories of her origin.

According to the M*A*S*H song, "Suicide is painless," but abduction and imprisonment certainly isn't.

I totally agree, Anna, and that's why I've said in the past that Dave Edgar's opinion (well, one of his opinions but I think the one most firmly held by him) that if Madeleine is alive she'd most likely be held in a cellar or such-like place, would be the most likely scenario IF she had been abducted. There would be no outings, no chance of anyone ever seeing her, no visits outside to anywhere, no one allowed in her prison except those invited by her kidnapper (my blood runs cold even to write that). She would be a helpless victim in the way Natascha was, even more so maybe because of her younger age, and the idea that she would be unharmed would be completely crazy.

In some ways, the thought of Madeleine having died and being at least beyond harm and at peace could be seen as the lesser of two evils. Who could wish the fate she might otherwise have met on any child? For anyone to say there is no evidence of her being harmed seems so callous and cold, as though even the fact of being wrenched away from all she knew and loved wouldn't have caused her massive harm in itself. And the stupid pretence of a new rich loving family appears to be just that - pretence, a fairy story designed to further the fiction that her parents' lack of proper care for her didn't play any part in destroying the life of the 3-year-old child they should have been protecting and caring for.

I don't know that she'd necessarily be in a cellar. Think of Elizabeth Smart - brainwashed raped and terrorized for some initial period of time, and out roaming the streets when found 9 months later, 16 years old. Jaycee Duggard - kidnapped at 11, held for 18 years in a back yard encampment - initially raped and terrorized etc then basically living back there in his garden in a series of tents, and working in her tormentor's graphics and print business, answering phones etc. as an adult. Free at any time to pick up the phone and dial 911.

These girls were 16 and 11 when taken and when they were found and questioned by police, 9 months later or 18 years later both denied they were Jaycee or Elizabeth and only after the cops separated them from their kidnapper and pressed the questioning further did they admit their true identities which thank God they were old enough to know and remember their ordeal.

A 4 year old, just barely four, at three years later, might not need to be held in some kind of dungeon or even locked in the house, she might not remember her name was ever Madeleine. She might not be speaking English. Whatever the circumstance of her captivity if there were one, she would not be who she was three years ago, and with a child of that age I believe it could be the case that they come to view their kidnapper as their parent and don't remember or repress their memory of their true family. Unless the kidnapper had some reason to remind Madeleine of who she really is, he would have little need at this point of hiding her to the extent of being locked in a dungeon. The only risk is that someone notice her resemblance to the age progression photo and her colomba and ask her - even then the likely case is if asked her name she'd give the name she has gone by for 3 years. but if she were kept indoors or in a compound usually and not out in public regularly the kidnappers or "adoptive parents" might think they had little to fear.

Someone saw a girl that looked like Jaycee Duggard a few months after her kidnapping, looking at a poster about the Jaycee Duggard kidnapping in a shop window. Her abductor did have her out with him in public - just as that monster did who kidnapped Shasta Groene - they know the kids will be too terrified to speak or tell anyone at first and then later probably repress it or actually not remember especially if it was traumatic. Their defense mechanisms cause them to bond with the abductor becaues they need them to survive.