Teen held for eight years says she didn’t miss much

Published 9:00 pm Monday, August 28, 2006

VIENNA, Austria – The Austrian teenager held in an underground cell for more than eight years insisted Monday she didn’t miss out on much in captivity and was even spared some temptations and torments of adolescence, such as smoking, drinking and dealing with “bad friends.”

On her fifth full day of freedom, 18-year-old Natascha Kampusch broke her silence in a statement that appeared to lend credence to the theory she may have suffered from “Stockholm Syndrome,” in which victims cope by identifying with their captors.

Kampusch, who was 10 when she was snatched off a street on her way to school and imprisoned in a cramped, windowless cell, described what she went through at the hands of Wolfgang Priklopil, 44, who killed himself within hours of her escape by throwing himself beneath a commuter train.

Kampusch refused to discuss allegations of abuse but indicated that Priklopil at times treated her well and at other times very badly.

“I don’t want to, and won’t, answer any questions about intimate or personal details,” she said. “I will punish breaches of personal boundaries, whoever crosses voyeuristic boundaries. Whoever tries that better prepare themselves for something.”

She described the man who abducted her as “a part of my life,” adding “that’s why I also mourn for him in a certain way.”

Kampusch also said she refused to comply with Priklopil’s requests to call him “master.”

“He was not my master. I was just as strong,” she said in the statement, read to reporters by a psychologist.

Police said Monday they have only just begun to question Kampusch about her March 1998 abduction and many questions remain unanswered about the case, which until her escape Wednesday was one of Austria’s greatest unsolved criminal mysteries.

In her statement, Kampusch said she understood the curiosity about what she endured and how she is faring, but she pleaded: “Please leave me alone for the coming while.”

“Everyone always wants to ask me intimate questions. That’s nobody’s business,” she said. “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.”

“Many people are taking care of me,” she added, saying that she has been in telephone contact with her family. “Give me time until I can give my own account.”