A decade after escaping, Natascha Kampusch talks about overcoming the horror of being raped and imprisoned for eight years
Natascha talks exclusively to Fabulous about life outside the cellar where she was held prisoner and refusing to be a victim
WHILE Natascha Kampusch relaxes in a corner of the grand Palmenhaus restaurant in Vienna, Austria, butterflies flit against the glass behind her.
The insects are part of a visitor attraction, and they transfix her.
“They are beautiful,” she says in near-perfect English.
Like the butterflies, there is something hypnotic about Natascha.
In August 2006, she became a global good-news story after escaping from eight years of unimaginable horror in a secret cellar.
Wolfgang Priklopil – the 44-year-old loner who abducted and imprisoned her when she was just 10 years old – threw himself under a train the same day.
The world was unsettled and fascinated by Natascha’s story.
She wrote a bestselling book about her experience, 3,096 Days – the exact period she’d been held captive for – which was published in 2010 and made into a film three years later.
She appeared on chat shows and even briefly hosted her own, which ran for three episodes.
Then, after several years in the public eye, she gradually withdrew.
As Natascha was to discover, escaping that cellar was one thing – but living with constant scrutiny and speculation was another.
“Some people misunderstand me,” Natascha, now 28, says.
“They think I am broken and traumatised – they think of me as the victim, not as someone who is strong. I refuse to be defined by what happened.”
A decade after her escape, Natascha is talking to Fabulous.
She has returned from her self-imposed exile with a new book, 10 Years of Freedom, about how she has rebuilt her life in the shadow of such suffering.
Today, she is giggly and engaging, yet guarded; endearingly naive in some respects, but in others weighed down with the horror that she lived through – and still lives through.
A few months ago, stories began circulating that Natascha was protecting a rumoured accomplice of Priklopil.
Sensational claims surfaced that Priklopil, known as “Wolfi”, was murdered and his body placed on the train tracks to make it look like suicide. The report implicated Priklopil’s friend, a business associate named Ernst Holzapfel, who admits he was introduced to Natascha during her captivity, but claims he had no idea she had been kidnapped.
German news magazine Der Spiegel also revealed that two eminent coroners investigating the case believe Priklopil’s death was “not investigated to acceptable forensic standards” by police and that he may have been killed before the train decapitated him.
Natascha, however, dismisses the conspiracy theories.
“It has been difficult,” she says, wearily.
“There are lots of people who didn’t believe that I was captured. They thought I had planned it all since I was 10. That I was in on it. It is upsetting, but I try to hide my emotions.
“I stayed strong when I was captive and managed to keep my identity and inner strength. When I freed myself, I was in the focus of the world’s media and I lost my self-esteem because of the questions that were asked about me.
“Now I’ve won it back. I know my own place in society. My personality is clearer. I’m more confident.”
Natascha was walking to school in Vienna on the morning of March 2, 1998, when she was snatched by Priklopil – a communications technician who reportedly had a fixation with children.
During her captivity, she was largely confined to a 5m x 5m reinforced concrete dungeon.
She was gradually allowed into other parts of the house to cook and clean and, when she was older and completely compliant, was occasionally taken outside.
Treated as a slave, Natascha was coerced, beaten, raped and tortured.
Her escape came when she was vacuuming Priklopil’s car and someone phoned him on his mobile.
Because of the noise from the vacuum, he walked away to take the call – and Natascha fled.
She ran through gardens, jumping fences and begging passers-by to call the police.
After about five minutes, she knocked on the window of a 71-year-old neighbour, saying: “I am Natascha Kampusch.”
Her relationship with Priklopil was complex, and Natascha has always been honest about the ambiguity of her feelings towards her captor – who, as well as tormenting her, showed her moments of tenderness.
In the early years, he would sit in the cellar with her, feed her, brush her teeth and read her bedtime stories.
He tried to educate her and gave her books.
For eight years of her life, he was the only human she had contact with – her abuser and her carer in one.
“My views on Wolfgang have not changed,” she says quietly.
“There are grey areas, things are never black and white, there are always different shades in cases like mine. There is nothing I miss about him, but he was there and it was part of my life.
“It is a kind of justice he’s dead and I am alive,” she says.
“I can live my life. He cannot. I was in a kind of prison. I freed myself. Sometimes I think it’d be better if he was alive because then he would have had to be imprisoned, like I was. But he freed himself by killing himself.”
Natascha doesn’t accept that she suffers from Stockholm syndrome – the psychological phenomenon in which hostages express sympathy and have positive feelings toward their captors – but has admitted that she mourned Priklopil’s death and she is also rumoured to carry a photo of him in her purse.
The contradictions were unpalatable for many, fuelling the speculation that Natascha was somehow complicit in her own abduction.
The fact that she still owns the house in which she was imprisoned has been more fuel for the conspiracists’ fire.
It was awarded to her as compensation from Priklopil’s estate after he died – and she continues to visit it regularly.
Going there brings mixed emotions, she says, for this house of horrors also played such a large part in her childhood.
“I own the house, but it is not useful for me because I can’t do anything with it,” she says.
“I can’t sell it, rent it, move in and it’s a kind of burden. I have it because I didn’t want it to get in the wrong hands. I go there every two months – not often, but I have to go there to maintain it. What is important is to never give other people the opportunity to play with my life.”
In the past few years, Natascha has been working in digital marketing in Vienna and has devoted herself to charity work.
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She’s been a spokesperson for animal rights charity PETA, speaking out against the cruelty of confining animals to cages.
She has also funded a ward in a children’s hospital in Sri Lanka, and written the soon-to-be-published 10 Years of Freedom.
“It is about the time since my self-liberation,” she explains.
“It is about my emotions and feelings and experiences with people outside. It wasn’t easy.
“There have been so many different turbulent thoughts and emotions in the 10 years since. Writing them helped me focus. It was important for me to give people who are interested in my story the truth about who I am.”
For a decade, Natascha has been slowly carving out a new life for herself.
She remains close to her family, who she sees regularly, but lives alone and won’t discuss her private life, nor whether she has been able to form relationships with men.
She enjoys music, films, Agatha Christie detective novels and horse riding – and has developed coping mechanisms to keep the demons at bay.
“I do something I call psychological cleaning, like washing my face, but for my mind,” she explains.
“I remember what happened during all those years, but I don’t use those memories. They are stored in an archive in my mind, but they do not control me. I am not traumatised. It is hard to deal with what happened, but I overcame those issues.”
But, inevitably, the scars are still there.
Natascha admits she suffers anxiety and struggles to be alone in quiet places – the silence and solitude must surely remind her of the cellar. “Sometimes, when it is absolutely quiet and I’m by myself the flashbacks come,” she says.
“It is a burden, like a heavy stone. I don’t like holidays, either. They are creepy. I always need to be doing something. I can’t sit somewhere and relax.”
Shortly after her escape, Natascha was offered the chance of a new identity and of anonymity.
She refused, and has since learned how to cope with the intense attention from the media and general public.
“Initially, it was hard to talk about [the abduction], but people are interested and if people have respect, then so do I,” she says.
“I no longer see it as annoying. I get recognised when I am out. People give me hugs, which I don’t like. Sometimes they are not so polite, but I cope with that, too.
“The fame was a weight to carry at first, but now I can handle it. At first I didn’t like being on television, but now it is routine, like wearing clothes and brushing teeth. It is like everyday life.
“I think people are fascinated because in most cases when someone disappears they are found [dead] in plastic bags, in the forest, in lakes or in cellars,” she says, admitting that she follows similar cases to hers, like the disappearance of Madeleine McCann.
“I can’t give the McCanns advice because it is so difficult,” she says.
“They have my empathy. It would be a lie to say I know that Maddie is alive. It is speculation. I feel so sorry for the parents and for Maddie.”
As for the future, Natascha plans to continue her charity work.
Despite everything she has endured, she refuses to think of herself as someone to be pitied.
“I want to give something back,” she insists.
“I am thankful. I have had a second chance and I want to do something positive. I am lucky, it is a great gift to share my inner happiness.”
Of course, it is impossible to go through what Natascha has experienced and not to be fundamentally affected.
She is free from the confines of the prison she was forced to live in – but you sense that part of her is still trapped there.
Like the butterflies in the glass cage behind her, Natascha’s freedom has its limits.
10 Years of Freedom by Natascha Kampusch (€19,99, List Verlag) is out now.