Natascha Kampusch, who was held in what she described as a hen battery for 8 years, has given her first interview to Ausrtrian TV. It's quite a story. This was on Yahoo news.
Kidnapped girl only thought of escape
Wednesday September 6, 05:38 PM
For the first time since her dash to freedom two weeks ago, Kampusch told Austrian magazine News and daily Kronen-Zeitung about the years she spent in a cell ADVERTISEMENT
"I asked myself again and again 'why among all the million people did this happen to me?'," Kampusch told News.
Priklopil had locked Kampusch in the windowless 6-sq-metre cell in his house in Strasshoff, some 25 km (15 miles) outside the capital, after abducting her on her way to school in 1998.
"I felt like a chicken in a hen battery," Kampusch added. "I promised myself that I would never lose the thought of escape."
"I always thought that I wasn't born to be locked up and to have my life ruined completely," she said. "I despaired about this injustice."
The details of one of Austria's most notorious crimes have kept the nation spellbound since Kampusch escaped from her abductor while he took a phone call outside his house. He committed suicide shortly after by jumping under a train.
A first television interview with Kampusch will be broadcast at 8.15 p.m. (1815 GMT) on state broadcaster ORF.
News and Kronen-Zeitung also were the first to publish pictures of the young woman at the centre of national soul-searching and an international media frenzy.
News shows the now 18-year-old with baby-blue eyes and a bright smile talking to reporters and strolling through the garden of the hospital where she is shielded from media and cared for by doctors and psychiatrists.
KILLING SPREE
Strands of her blonde hair were showing from under a pink and purple scarf, which advisers told her to wear to give her greater options should she want to change how she looks.
In the interview, Kampusch also recalled how Priklopil, who she referred to as "the criminal", had threatened to go on a killing spree if she tried to escape.
"I wasn't scared (for myself) -- I love freedom and for me death is the ultimate freedom, the redemption from him," she said. "But he said all the time he would first of all kill the neighbours, then me and then himself."
Kampusch said she had pondered for a long time about the right timing for her flight.
In another interview with daily Kronen-Zeitung she said she had tried one time to hop out of the car when they were driving through Vienna, but that Priklopil managed to pin her down.
She also recalled how she despaired when she heard about search teams looking for her body after her disappearance.
"I despaired when I got the feeling that they had written me off as a living person," she told News magazine.
"There was hopelessness -- I was persuaded that no one would ever again go looking for me and that I would never be found."
The young woman said she felt her captor's suicide shortly after her escape had been a waste.
"No one should kill themselves," she said. "He could have given me so much information."
"Now we need to reconstruct the very complex circumstances without him."
The ORF journalist who spoke to Kampusch said he was surprised by her confidence but also shocked by the interview.
"Who would have thought that someone who has been locked up for eight years would have so much self-confidence," said Christoph Feurstein in an interview with ORF radio on Wednesday.
"When she (talked about how she) stepped into that cell for the first time -- you could feel her fear."
While ORF has not paid for the interview, the broadcaster has sold international media rights, and all proceeds will go into a fund for Kampusch, her adviser Dietmar Ecker said
It seems almost unbelievable to me that someone could be held for so long without arousing suspicion. She seems to be recovering well, but not surprisingly after such an ordeal, is still receiving psychiatric care