Natascha Kampusch was just ten years old on the day she was abducted.
Snatched and bundled into a transit van as she walked to school, she spent the following 8 years (exactly 3096 days) in captivity.
Her kidnapper, Wolfgang Priklopil, repeatedly abused her, both sexually and physically, for the duration of the time he had her under his control.
Aged 18, Natascha eventually found the strength and bravery to escape when Priklopil was distracted on a phonecall while she cleaned his van.
I have read much of the negative articles and commentary on the case, most of which accuse the young woman of ‘deliberately’ not escaping sooner and for being in love with Priklopil.
Hours after her escape, Natascha’s sick kidnapper committed suicide by lying down in front of a train and she reportedly cried for hours and hours upon hearing the news.
But what can we – those of us who were NOT kidnapped from the vulnerable and innocent age of 10, who were NOT subjected to slave-like conditions or forced to perform sexual acts with a grown man years before we were physically, mentally or emotionally ready – really say about that?
How can anyone say how she ‘should’ have behaved or how she ‘should’ feel now, given all that she’s been through?
In a recent interview with Austrian newspaper Der Kurier, Natascha said that the media attention she has received, positive and negative, has been such an impediment to her recovery in the outside world, that she described it as a ‘second jail’.
“The media circus began after I managed to escape and has definitely restricted me in many ways. I didn’t feel protected and safe”, she says.
“There are only a few moments, in which I have felt truly free over the past 10 years.”
Natascha plans to release a second book about the ordeal this Autumn called Ten Years Of Freedom. The first, 3096 Days was a huge best seller and was also later turned into a movie of the same name.
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