Posted on 09/06/2006 7:41:33 PM PDT by blam
'I thought only of escape. I felt like a poor chicken in a hen house'
By Kate Connolly in Berlin
(Filed: 07/09/2006)
Natascha Kampusch, the Austrian teenager who was held in captivity beneath a garage for eight years, said yesterday she had thought "only of escape" during her imprisonment and dreamed of cutting off her kidnapper's head with an axe.
Austrians watch the TV interview on a big screen in a café in Vienna
Speaking to the media for the first time since her ordeal ended with her escape two weeks' ago, Miss Kampusch appeared self-confident, witty, articulate and strong-willed.
A journalist who interviewed her for the Austrian magazine News said she had the vocabulary of a "highly-educated academic".
Dressed like a typical 18-year-old in jeans, platform shoes and with her strawberry blonde hair tucked under a purple silk scarf, Miss Kampusch gave a sweeping interview covering everything from details of her captivity to her plans for the future.
Most movingly, she spoke of her constant thoughts of escaping from the windowless, airless cell in which she was held by her captor, Wolfgang Priklopil.
"I thought only of escape," she said. "I always had the thought, 'Surely I didn't come into the world so I could be locked up and my life completely ruined'," she told News. "I always felt like a poor chicken in a hen house. You saw on TV how small my cell was — it was a place to despair."
She said she became convinced that she would never see her grandmothers or her pet cats again. On her release she learnt they had all died.
"I had terrible thoughts," she said. "Sometimes I dreamt that I would cut off his head had I had an axe – you see the extent to which the brain is tormented when it is searching for a solution."
Rather than having fallen in love with her captor, Miss Kampusch said she spent almost her entire incarceration working out how to escape from Priklopil, whom she called a "criminal".
"When I was only 12, I dreamt that around the age of 15 — or at some point — that when I was strong enough to do so, I would break out of my prison," she said.
"I repeatedly puzzled about when the time would be ripe. But I knew I couldn't risk anything, least of all a failed escape attempt.
"A failed attempt might have meant never being able to come out of my cell ever again. I had to work on building up his trust over time."
Miss Kampusch finally escaped last month and hours later Priklopil threw himself under a train.
She called his death "a waste", saying she would have had many questions to ask him.
She agreed to give the interview on the understanding that she could choose which questions to answer and approve the final version. The interview, the first time that she has met anyone beyond the circle of experts caring for her, did not touch on the subject of whether Priklopil sexually abused her.
After her escape, she showed an extraordinary presence of mind by demanding to be put under a blanket as police escorted her away so that she could not be photographed.
Recalling the time shortly after she was kidnapped, Miss Kampusch said she felt "written off" when she heard on the news that lakes were being dragged in the hope of finding her body.
She said she hoped to travel abroad and at home, specifically taking the train from Vienna to Berlin. "The journey is what I look forward to, not the place itself," she said.
One of the first things she wanted to do was get a flu jab, complaining that she was very susceptible to illness having not been exposed to germs for years.
She hoped to go on a cruise with her mother, dismissing out of hand the numerous reports that relations between them were frosty.
"I love my mother and she loves me," she said. "We don't need to live together to know that we belong together."
She said she hoped to study "something that will not take too long" and had her heart set on a career in either journalism, psychology, law or as a writer.
Miss Kampusch said she had been shocked to learn that under Austrian law, Priklopil would have received a maximum sentence of 10 years for kidnapping and incarcerating her.
"I would not have liked that," she said. "I don't know yet if I can write a book about what happened to me."
Miss Kampusch said she had repeatedly asked herself what she had done to deserve her imprisonment. "I thought that maybe I'd done something to offend God … I was in real despair — furious and despairing."
Too bad the guy killed himself. I would like to have seen him hung by his sack!
Update ping. :)
Bizarre story.
The max sentence, it says here, is 10 years. 10 years at the end of a rope, perhaps?
What incredible patience she displayed to make sure the escape was at the right time.
I agree. She had only one chance and failure may have meant death. She had to succeed the first attempt.
Apparently. . .only ten years for the offense. . .
Would like to see the law changed in honor. . .and with respect to Natascha. . .i.e. a Natascha's Law implemented. . .ten years for every day that is stolen from the lifetime of a kidnapped child.
It is the least they can do. . .
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