For first time
Natascha breaks silence after 10 years
NATASCHA Kampusch was held in a house where she was raped and incarcerated for eight years – and incredibly, where she still lives part-time.
Kampusch was imprisoned at the property near Vienna, Austria, by deranged loner Wolfgang Priklopil, but a decade on has relived her horrific ordeal in detail for the first time.
She showed how she escaped through the front gate, and told how she attracted the attention of a woman in a nearby house. Kampusch had knocked on her window, whispering “please help me” but has never spoken to her since.
Bizarrely, Kampusch, now 28, still chooses to live part-time in the Austrian lair left to Priklopil by his family, and subsequently to her in his estate along with his car. Even the cellar that imprisoned her for so many years has been preserved in its original state.
Kampusch explained: “I never wanted to sell it because I was afraid it could become some sort of ghoulish museum.”
She has written a new book called Ten Years of Freedom but her ordeal goes on. Meanwhile a new probe is under way concerning Priklopil’s apparent suicide. Two coroners found that he may have been murdered.
She spends weekends at the house where her childhood was stolen. Despite a fortune estimated at £5 million (R93m) earned from TV interviews, books and a movie collaboration, she still appears a little girl lost.
Two years ago she announced that she had cut herself off from people and social media sites – and even stopped driving lessons because she felt uncomfortable being in a car that could “take me away”.
Kampusch claims to have an advertising and graphics company called Consolea but it is not entirely clear what it does. She quit high school because the appearance of fellow students was a “horror”, she said – the result of having just her captor for company. Kampusch once said: “Although people may still be discreet and sympathetic, for me it is very unrelaxing to be in a room with many of them.”
Psychiatrists believe she has a mental block in letting go of the past – as she has no boyfriend and even carries a photo of Priklopil in her handbag. Now she has relived her ordeal in an interview with Germany’s Bild newspaper.
After being Priklopil’s captive in a cellar under his garage – where she was beaten, starved and turned into his sex slave before being allowed upstairs at 14 – Kampusch fled on August 23, 2006. Priklopil died beneath the wheels of a train later that night. Kampusch recalled that fateful day, saying: “I was told to clean his car. He wanted to sell it and had told me to clean it really thoroughly.”
At 12.56pm Priklopil, 44, took a call on his mobile phone and was momentarily distracted.
Kampusch continued: “Previously he observed me all the time. But because of the vacuum cleaner whirring in my hand he had to walk a few steps away. I crept to the gate which was usually closed or blocked by heavy objects, but not on this day. I could hardly breathe.
“I felt solidified, as if my arms and legs were paralysed.”
Then at 12.58pm she opened the gate and ran to freedom, ending the ordeal that began in March 1998 when Priklopil snatched her as she walked to school aged 10. “I looked to the right and left without knowing which way to go,” she said. “Then I ran.”
Kampusch walked past two family homes but didn’t stop, explaining: “I was afraid he would follow me here so I wanted to get further away and hide.” She ran to an allotment, where she met two men who ignored her. “Then I saw a woman in a garden house and knocked on her window and whispered: ‘Please help me!’
“She asked what I was doing and then called the police”. – Daily Mail