By DPA
Vienna : A year after she escaped from a basement dungeon, Natascha Kampusch sought to show the world how she was coping with freedom after spending nearly half of her young years imprisoned by a criminal.
It was clear from her interview on Austrian television ORF Monday that she still struggled with some health and other problems from her eight years in captivity. But slowly she was losing her fears.
“Initially I got scared quickly when someone approached me or there were loud noises … and I still have circulatory problems,” she said.
The 19-year-old kidnap survivor stressed that she was “not a victim,” and wanted to be taken seriously. Now, she wanted to make the best of her situation and not “repay evil with evil”.
Kampusch escaped on Aug 23, 2006, from the basement of a house outside Vienna, and her captor killed himself shortly afterwards.
About her kidnapper, 44-year-old Wolfgang Priklopil, Kampusch said she regarded him as “a poor soul, lost and misguided”.
She felt increasingly sorry for him, Kampusch added.
“What he did to me has moved farther away,” she said. “It … comes to the surface again and again, and I just try to deal with those memories best as I can.”
Headlines surrounding the spectacular case have become more rare these days, but media interest in the young Viennese has not waned.
Tabloid press photos allegedly showing Kampusch kissing her boyfriend and a media stampede at the presentation of a book penned by her mother proved that Kampusch was still a far cry from being a “normal” girl.
Family feuds and questions as to why she has up to now failed to set up a promised charity add to the controversies surrounding the young Austrian.
On Aug 23, 2006, a sunny summer afternoon, a young woman suddenly turned up in a garden in Strasshof near Vienna, claiming she was Natascha Kampusch, a girl who had vanished on the way to school in March 1998, aged 10.
One of the most spectacular crime cases in Austrian history had suddenly found a surprisingly happy ending.
A few hours later, police confirmed that Priklopil, the technician who had abducted the girl and kept her like a slave for more than eight years, had committed suicide after Kampusch’s escape.
But while the police file on the case was closed, the media hype around Natascha had just begun.
For weeks, she was kept in a secret location, surrounded by doctors, lawyers and media consultants. The unexpectedly well-spoken kidnap victim gave interviews to select Austrian media, while her lawyers quickly moved against any unauthorized coverage.
Kampusch’s priorities today are simple – completing the schooling her kidnapper prevented her from pursuing, learning to drive or going on her first vacation.
She is also trying to cope with a dysfunctional family that predates her disappearance, with her estranged parents Brigitta Sirny and Ludwig Koch now feuding and making mutual unsavoury accusations.
Proceeds from her media deals were destined for a foundation set up to help other kidnap victims, Kampusch said, but the foundation would have to wait. Her own life must have top priority.
“Those eight years made me what I am today. I cannot ignore them,” she told Austrian TV.