This happened about 1.5 hours from me...I thought I would share this remarkable yet horrifying story.

One thing confuses me, they say she was suffering from Stockholm Syndrome, but if that were true then why would she have tried to escape, since someone suffering from that usually exhibits loyalty to their captor

I don't think it is either. I think this more of a case of fear that was put into her over the last 8 years or so. Sort of like Elizabeth Smart - Who also kept a diary and said she only stayed out of fear. She was only with her kidnappers less then a year I think... So we can only glimse really what the fear a 10 year old girl must have felt growing up in that environment.

I wish he'd have been tortured before he killed himself.

^ agreed.

What a wuss. I wish I was the one who pushed him in front of the train.

Maybe she was just playing along with this freak out of fear for her life?

Horrible and disturbing story, but a happy ending.
I just hope she isn't scarred for life but I fear she will be.

I was reading in the paper today that she nows wants to keep the house she was kept captive in for compensation. She is also refusing to see her family and has written an interesting letter to the media. I'll try and find it and post it...

Found that letter for you. Very disturbing, I must say:

Dear Journalists, Reporters, General PUblic,

I am definitely aware of what a strong impression the events of the past few days have made on all of you. I can well imagine how shocking and intimidating the thought must be that something like this can even be possible.

I am also aware that you have a certain curiosity towards me and of course want to know more specific details about the circumstances surrounding how I lived.

I want to assure you ahead of time that I don't want to, and won't, answer any questions about intimate or personal details. I will punish breaches of personal boundaries, whoever crosses voyeuristic boundaries. Whoever tries that better prepare themselves for something.

I grew up to become a young lady with an interest in education and also human needs.

The living space

My room was sufficiently equipped. It was my room. And not meant to be shown to the public.

Daily Life

This occured in a well-ordered manner, often a common breakfast - since he (Priklopil) mostly didn't work - housework, reading, watching television, talking, cooking. That was it, for years. Everything tied to the fear of loneliness.

About the relationship

He was not my master. I was just as strong but, symbolically speaking, he carried me with his hands and kicked me with his feet (editor note: this is an Austrian expression meaning at times he treated her very well and at other times very badly).

But he and I both knew that he picked the wrong one to have an argument with.

He carried out the kidnapping by himself. Everything was already prepared. Together with me he then prepared the room, which was not just 1.6m high.

Incidentally, I didn't cry after the escape. There was no reason to mourn. In my eyes his death would not have been necessary. It would certainly have been a punishment, not the end of the world. He was a part of my life.

That's why I'm mourning for him in a certain way.

It's true of course that my youth was different to that of some others but in principle, I don't have the feeling that I missed out on something. I was spared some things, didn't start smoking and drinking and didn't have any bad friends.

Messages to the media

The only thing the press should spare me from is the endless slandering of my being, the misinterpretations, the know-all manner and the lack of respect towards me.

PResently, I feel well at the place I'm at now, maybe a little bit patronised. I decideed only to have telephone contact with my family. I will decide for myself when I'll reestablish contact with journalists.

About my escape

When I was supposed to clean and vacuum the car in the garden, he distanced himself during the noise of the vacuum running.

In addition, I never called him master, even though that's what he wanted. I think he wanted it - to be called that - but didn't seriously mean it.

Intimate questions

Everyone always wants to ask me intimate questions. That's nobody's business. Maybe I'll tell a therapist one day or someone when I feel the need to. Or maybe never. The intimacy only belongs to me....

I'm linked to Wolfgang's mother thorugh feelings of empathy.... I and both of us think of him.

I want to also thank all the people who are so greatly taking aprt in my fate. Please leave me alone for the coming while.... many people are taking care of me. Give me time until I can give my own account.

*end transcript*

Though I did get this out of the newspapre so I believe those "....." show that the editor's took some of it out. I'll have a look for a source with the whole letter.

edit: found a Source. It doesn't seem to have the unedited letter either, unless those dots are there in the original. I dunno. Anyway, feel free to check it out.

Well it probably impossible for her not to be a little messed up after what happened, lets see if time heals those wounds

Thanks PA, I was having trouble relocating it! It must be so hard for the poor girl. She must be so confused.

First of all, I just realized after I posted this topic that I messed up with the title.
I shouldn't have put that she was held hostage as she wasn't being held for compensation. That was a little bilingual mix-up on my part and I apologize
In my opinion, I think that they say she is suffering from Stockholm Syndrome because in some ways she is sympathising with her captor.
She claims that for the most part Wolfgang (her captor) treated her very well and that she led an okay life. Most normal people know that her captor is a deranged messed up man, there is NO WAY around that. Yet she has feelings and sympathies for a man who took away 8 years of her life!
But, in ways I suppose I could understand why she would feel this way. Maybe it was her only hold on sanity. Maybe she forced herself to have feelings for this man as a way to get through it.
I also think it is way too early to be putting all these labels on this girl and wanting to know every detail of what happened to her.
She has been through an experience that most of us couldn't even begin to comprehend. She needs time to get her own head around things BEFORE everyone bombards her with questions. I would think that the doctors treating her would know this. Now is not the time for questions, now is the time for her to begin to understand what has happened to her and hopefully with time she will heal.
I really feel for this girl

The Austrian teenager held captive for 8 1/2 years in an underground cell dwelled on escaping during her long ordeal and kept asking herself, “Why me?”
Natascha Kampusch, 18, has told the Austrian magazine News that she feared she might trigger a blood-bath when she bolted to freedom Aug. 23 while her captor, Wolfgang Priklopil, talked on his cell-phone.

He occasionally took her out in public, she said, threatening a killing spree if she ran – “the neighbours, then me and then himself.”

Priklopil, 44, killed himself by jumping in front of a train. Kampusch says she regrets his death. “He could have given me so much information.”

She says she despaired during her captivity when she learned that people believed she was dead.

“I always had the thought: `Surely I didn’t come into the world so I could be locked up and my life completely ruined. Why, of all the many millions of people, did this have to happen to me?’

"I always felt like a poor chicken in a hen house. It was a place to despair. I promised myself that I would never lose the thought of escape.”

The interview comes two weeks after Kampusch got away. She had been kept in a tiny windowless basement room in a house about 25 kilometres from Vienna.

Doctors have examined her for a possible heart problem. She says she suffered during her captivity from palpitations that made her dizzy and rendered some of her memories “fuzzy.”

Kampusch is having “no trouble living together with other people.”

Now, she says, “I want to catch up and study. I’m interested in everything and I would have to live forever to study all that.”

The interviews hit the newsstands a few hours before a TV interview with Kampusch, now 18.

In a separate interview with the mass-circulation daily Kronen Zeitung, Kampusch said she once tried to jump out of Priklopil’s car, “but he held me back and then sped away.” She did not say when that failed attempt occurred.

News printed a large color photograph of a pensive-looking Kampusch on its cover, showing her with piercing blue eyes and a pink kerchief covering part of her strawberry blond hair.

Kampusch also told the magazines that she often did not get enough to eat. Another Austrian magazine, Profil, had reported that at the time of her escape she weighed just 92 pounds — exactly her weight when she was abducted off a street while walking to school as a freckle-faced 10-year-old.

Kampusch called her escape “completely spontaneous.’’

“I was there behind the gate to the garden and I felt dizzy. I realized for the first time how weak I really was,” she said.

But Kampusch added that she felt well enough — “physically, mentally and no heart problems” — to attempt another escape.

Once out on the street, “I saw a window open and someone busy in a kitchen, and I asked the woman to call the police,” she said.

Tonight, a 20-minute prerecorded interview with Kampusch was to air nationwide on public broadcaster ORF, which said her face would be visible unless she asks for a last-minute electronic retouching.

Previously, the station had suggested she would appear behind a screen or with her face otherwise altered so she would not be recognizable on the street.

“People will see her,” said Christoph Feurstein, the journalist who interviewed her Tuesday at an undisclosed location.

Feurstein said Kampusch spoke “from the gut” in the TV interview and wore a headscarf, which he described as more of a fashion accessory than an attempt at a disguise.

Among the more touching moments in the interview, according to Feurstein: Kampusch describing the stillness of the cell when she was first thrust inside, and her account of how she once struggled in vain to make eye contact with people when her captor took her shopping.

Although the interviews released today included the first images of Kampusch since her escape, they were not the first time she has been heard from.

Last week, Kampusch issued an eloquent handwritten statement that gave details of her captivity, spent for the most part in the tiny, windowless cell in the dingy basement of Priklopil’s home in the Vienna suburb of Strasshof.

That statement contained some surprises: Kampusch said she did not feel she missed out on much during her years as a prisoner, and she said she “mourned in a certain way” for Priklopil.

ORF said Kampusch had decided which questions to answer and had refused to be asked anything intimate. Police have said she may have had sexual contact with her captor, but have refused to elaborate.

Kampusch told News that she regretted that Priklopil committed suicide “because he could have explained so much more to me and to the police,” but added that she no longer wished to talk about him.

Kampusch also told the magazine she loved her parents, who divorced after she was taken, and denied there was any controversy. Psychologists treating her have said she has been in touch with her mother, but has not asked for her father since they were briefly reunited after her escape.

She said she wants to complete her high school education and is considering a range of possible careers, including journalism, psychology, acting and art, and that she has not yet decided whether to write a book about her ordeal.

Source

Remarkable, simply remarkable.

First thread in World Events

Second thread in True Crime

Damm!!!! This is the 3rd time you got me.

This thread was posted Aug 25th !!! ???

This is front page news here in Toronto.( Toronto Star )

Show's how up to date we are in receiving news.

I just finished watching the television interview here.
And she looked nothing like I imagined she would look. No pale frail looking girl. Now I am not saying that I think she is not telling the truth about not getting enough to eat but, more like the media is exaggerating about her malnourished appearance.
She was definitely not anywhere near 92 pounds, I'm thinking more like 130. I don't think she gained 40 pounds between her escape and the interview.
Anyways, after seeing the interview and hearing her talk, I almost have to say that there is a lot more to the story then what we are seeing (or hearing).
I'm beginning to think that she just accepted her situation and possibly began to enjoy some sort of warped relationship with her captor. She also had MANY opportunities to escape and she never took them. She talked about how her captor even told her of ways that she could escape. He wanted to be caught as well.
It all seems too crazy to be true.

Don't feel bad.
This happened where I live so I knew about it the day that it happened. It was all over the news and everyone was talking about it.
Things on this scale hardly happen here so when it does...it reaches mammoth proportions. They just finished the 40 minute television interview with her and afterwards they had an hour of psychologists rambling on about their analysis of the situation. I skipped that part though.

I agree with you, this is how she looks on the cover of NEWS magazine.

I wonder how he got her clothes?wouldn't it look strange a 40 year old single man with no kids buying child clothes?

^
It's the age of internet and catalogs. He probably measured her at home and had her order what she wanted out of a catalog. Then it shipped straight to his house, no questions asked. At least that is what I think he would have done.

Here is another recent article regarding the kidnapping:


I can definitely see why this was not revealed sooner. It does seem to downplay the kidnapping and it seems a little suspicious in my opinion.