Against Their Will

by Nigel Cawthorne

  While studies show that people in solitary confinement deteriorate mentally very quickly, Natascha managed to hold on to her faculties. On the first Mother’s Day, she made her mother a present using just paper and crayons, because scissors and glue were not allowed. Despite what Priklopil said, Natascha knew her parents still loved her.

  As time passed, his demands became more stringent. She was not to speak unless spoken to. She was not to look him in the face. She was to do exactly what she was told. Even her demeanor was to be totally submissive. He also told her that she was to be grateful that he had “saved her”—she could not manage this. The only thing she found she could be grateful for was that he had neither raped nor killed her. He then ordered her to address him as “master.” She refused. He continued to insist but found he could not make her and, eventually, he dropped the matter.

  She then realized that, though he had absolute power over her, he was in fact a weak man and she told him that she forgave him as “everyone makes mistakes sometimes.” He appeared contrite; he said he would give her anything she wanted, except her freedom. She said what she wanted most of all was a hug. He plainly had problems with physical closeness and it took her a little time to train him to hold her not too loosely and not too tight.

  After six months’ captivity, Natascha grew depressed. Her classmates would be moving up a grade; she was being left behind. The only thing she thought could alleviate her dark mood was to have a scented bath like the ones her mother used to prepare for her. She pestered him about it and, eventually, he gave in. This meant he would have to take her upstairs. He warned her that if she screamed, he would have to kill her. All the doors and windows, he said, were secured with explosive devices. If she opened one, she would blow herself up.

  Finally, he opened the door and let her out of the cell. Beyond the first wood door, there was a massive second door made out of concrete. She discovered later that it sealed hermetically. If the ventilation system had failed, she would have suffocated. Beyond the door was a passageway twenty-seven inches high and nineteen inches wide. They had to crawl through this. It brought them out in a maintenance pit in the garage. The entrance to the tunnel had been hidden behind a dresser and a safe, which he moved aside. The pit was covered with floorboards that had a trapdoor cut in them. It was clear to Natascha that, even if the police had searched the house, they would never have found her in her cell.

  He indicated that she should stay silent and he repeated his threats as they went up the stairs into the house. But though she was free of the cell, Natascha realized that she was still a prisoner. There was no way she could overpower him and escape.

  Priklopil ran her a bubble bath. He stayed while she undressed. She protested but, by then, she was used to him seeing her naked. After she had a long soak, he toweled her dry and returned her to her cell.

  That fall, Priklopil painted her cell. Natascha was allowed to pick the color. For days afterward, she felt nauseous from the fumes. Bookcases, cupboards, and a bunk bed were brought in and assembled. During the redecorating, he grew angry and threw a heavy drill at her. Fortunately she saw it coming and ducked. The problem with the new furniture he had brought was that it took up most of the floor space and the cell became unbearably claustrophobic.

  At Christmas, he cluttered the place further with a plastic tree. He also bought her everything she asked for, including a small educational computer, a pad of drawing paper, and a box of watercolors. She had oil paints as well, but no turpentine, perhaps because he was afraid of the harmful fumes in the confined space of the cell. She then delighted in painting pictures of her parents, which she had to hide from Priklopil.

  On New Year’s Eve, she was left in her cell in complete darkness. Priklopil always saw the New Year in with his only friend, Ernst Holzapfel. They set off large and expensive fireworks. Years later, she was allowed upstairs to watch them and, when she was sixteen, she was even allowed out into the garden.

  In the new year, she was allowed upstairs to take a shower every two weeks. Sometimes he would let her stay upstairs to eat and watch TV. Every moment spent outside the cell was precious, though she found it impossible to relax around her captor. The petty rules he surrounded her with were beginning to have their effect. Her power to resist began to wane, though it never disappeared completely.

  The presents kept coming. The most important item was her Horse-Riding Barbie, and Natascha made new outfits for her. He encouraged her to sew and knit, and do other handicrafts. She seized the chance to make presents for her family, but did not tell him that’s what they were. Whenever she mentioned her parents, he flew into a rage. He was her family now, he said. He had rescued her and she belonged to him. This would make her cry. He would lock her in her cell and turn off the lights until she was “good” again.

  Natascha began to think that Priklopil wanted to create his own perfect world where he was the most important inhabitant. To do that, he had to deny her any other social interaction. Priklopil’s self-esteem was so low that he even denied her a mirror to see her own face. He tried to erase her identity and make her his own creation, but she somehow still found the energy to fight back. In her struggle against Priklopil, she found a strange sort of freedom. She was no longer a confused child in the feud between her mother and her father. And, since her abduction, she had stopped wetting the bed.

  In the fall of 1999, Priklopil decided that Natascha should change her name. She did not mind, as she had never really liked the name Natascha anyway. Priklopil suggested that, from then on, he call her Maria and she agreed. It was her middle name anyway and both her grandmothers had been called Maria, so Maria it was.

  That December, on a cold, moonlit night he took her out briefly into the garden. Again, she was warned that any attempt to scream or escape would be met with death. He also implied that he would also kill anyone who came to her rescue.

  One morning, early in the year 2000, she awoke to find that she was having her first period. When Priklopil came to the cellar, she asked him to go and buy the sanitary towels she had seen advertised on the TV. This presented Priklopil with a new problem, in his own mind at least. He was convinced that, sooner or later, the police would turn up. Whenever she had been upstairs, he meticulously wiped anything she had touched to get rid of the fingerprints. Now that she had her periods, she was forced to sit on piles of newspapers. The tiniest spot of blood left on the furniture might render telltale DNA. Later, as his paranoia grew, he forced her to wear a plastic bag over her hair. Every stray hair he found around the house, he burned. Eventually, he shaved her head.

  Now that she was on the verge of womanhood, the relationship between the two of them had changed. He no longer ordered her around like a child. Instead, he gave her what he considered to be womanly chores to do around the house. Even though she was upstairs, nobody could see her. The blinds were kept permanently down. The garden was full of shrubbery, screening the house from the neighbors. It was on a quiet backstreet. She rarely heard a car drive by or anyone outside. The only noise was from the nearby main railroad line to Vienna, so she was just as isolated as ever.

  Now that she was upstairs, he could watch her all the time and she had to do exactly what she was told at all times. She had to ask permission to sit down or stand up, and he would tell her which way to look. While she cleaned, he would stand behind her giving orders. Everything had to be spotless. He would even accompany her to the toilet. She was never alone for a moment. When her chores were done, she was returned to her dungeon for the night.

  Upstairs, she noticed that Priklopil had a copy of Mein Kampf on his shelves. He said he thought Hitler had been right to gas the Jews and that he, himself, was a follower of Austria’s far-right Freedom Party. He was delighted when the Twin Towers were attacked on 9/11, saying that New York was the center of a Jewish conspiracy for world dominance.

  Although Natascha was still only twelve, Priklopil got her to help with strenuous renovation work, dividing the hou
se into apartments. He frequently lost his temper and beat her. He apologized afterwards, but that did not stop him from doing it again. At fifteen, she began to hit back, but still she was no match for him physically and she was frequently injured.

  Priklopil weighed her regularly and cut her rations, saying it was to prevent her growing fat. She then found herself constantly hungry and suffered stomach cramps at night. She realized that the regimen was not designed to keep her slim and attractive, but rather weak and submissive.

  She was now bald and emaciated, and he made her work almost naked, figuring she would be less likely to run out into the street if she had no clothes on. The only relief came on the weekends, when he would lock her downstairs with books, videos, and a ration of food, leaving her there for three days. Often she would eat all the food on the Friday night so that at least once a week she would have a full belly.

  Gradually, Natascha began to learn a little more about her tormentor. His father had died a few years earlier when Priklopil was twenty-four. She was locked in the cellar over the weekends because his mother came to cook and clean, and he didn’t want her to see Natascha. It seems that, after he had moved back into the family house in Strasshof, she had taken over his apartment in Vienna. Priklopil’s mother left recipes that Natascha had to follow to the letter, though no matter what she did, he said it was never as good as his mother’s.

  Shortly before the abduction, Priklopil had lost his job at the electronics firm Siemens. He was registered as unemployed, but when sent for job interviews he deliberately acted stupidly so he would not get a job. Meanwhile, he and Ernst Holzapfel earned money renovating apartments. Priklopil had no other friends, let alone a girlfriend. The only women in his life were his mother—and Natascha.

  Though Priklopil was clearly crazy, Natascha had grown close to him. She began addressing him as Wolfgang or even Wolfi. As she had refused to call him “master,” he had upped the ante and insisted that she call him “My Lord” and kneel in front of him. Her refusal now resulted in a beating.

  When she was fourteen, she spent the night above ground. He locked her in his bedroom with him and tied her hands to his so that she could not move away from him in the night. Later, he used plastic handcuffs to keep her tethered to him. Natascha has refused to talk about what went on in the bedroom in hope of preserving her privacy. She has said that she was subjected to minor sexual assaults as part of her daily humiliation, but what occurred in the bedroom was not about sex. Others have their doubts; some feared Natascha had been abused when Stern magazine discovered that Priklopil was well known on the S&M scene in Vienna.

  In the summer, Priklopil let Natascha go out in the garden to sunbathe. And once, while he was looking after a next-door neighbor’s house while they were away, he took her for a swim in their pool. She was grateful, but it would not happen again. A dark period began. There were regular beatings. He starved her and kept her in the cellar, tormenting her by chanting, “Obey! Obey! Obey!” into the intercom and keeping her in the dark for long periods for minor infractions to his increasingly rigid code.

  Natascha watched with fascination as the trial of Marc Dutroux began on the television. Sabine Dardenne’s cell had been even smaller than her own. Now she was confronting her tormentor in court. Then Natascha heard on the radio about the publication of a new book about missing persons. Her case had been included, and everyone had concluded that she was dead. No one was ever coming to rescue her. They had given up looking for her long ago. She decided to commit suicide.

  In fact, she had tried several times before. Once she had tried to strangle herself. On another occasion, she had slit her wrists. This time she waited until Priklopil locked her in the cell for the night. Then she put paper and toilet rolls on the hot plate and turned it on. She waited for the place to fill with smoke, believing that she could suffocate herself this way. But when she began to cough uncontrollably, she panicked and doused the smoldering paper with water. In the morning, he smelled the smoke and saw the burned paper, and he beat her black and blue for trying to escape. One day, while they were working, Natascha asked if Priklopil would open a window. He refused, saying that she wanted to scream and run away. She promised that she would stay with him forever and never run away. Nevertheless, he dragged her to the front door, opened it and told her to go.

  “Just see how far you get, the way you look,” he said.

  She was wearing hardly anything. Her bruises were showing. Her ribs were sticking out. Her hair was only a short stubble. She lost her nerve.

  On another occasion, he threw her outside naked. Again, she could not find the courage to run away. She knew that he could run faster than she could, and he threatened to kill her, and any neighbor she ran to. She felt she could not be responsible for that. He told her that her parents were in jail. She could not go home. There would be no one to take her in. She begged to be let back into the house. All she could hope was that someone might witness one of these scenes and wonder what was going on.

  To break her spirit further, he took the doors off the toilets, so she would not be out of sight for a minute. Then he changed tack. He let her hair grow back and bleached it blonde in an effort to make her into what he thought of as a “perfect woman.”

  Priklopil became so confident that she would not run away that he decided to take her out. If anyone thought they recognized her, she was to pretend she did not know what they were talking about. If questioned further, she was to say that she was Priklopil’s niece. Then they got in his van and drove slowly down Heinestrasse. It was the first time she had been out in seven years.

  In a small wooded area outside Strasshof, she was allowed to get out of the van, briefly. Everything felt unreal. Soon after, they went out to a drugstore where she would be allowed to buy something for herself. Before they went in, she was warned not to say a word or everyone in the shop would die. At the checkout, the cashier spoke to her. She could hardly believe that she was exchanging words with someone other than her kidnapper. When they got home, there were more beatings to endure, but she promised herself that next time they went out she would find the strength to ask someone for help.

  One morning, Priklopil gave her a T-shirt and jeans. He said that they were going to a home improvement store. Priklopil took the road toward Vienna, past where Natascha’s grandmother had lived. The good times she had spent with her grandma seemed a lifetime away. Tears filled her eyes as they passed the turnoff to the apartment where she had lived. Her mother would be having her morning coffee, she surmised, surely thinking her daughter was dead. Natascha’s sister’s apartment was also nearby. Priklopil noticed that she was upset and ordered her to keep her eyes on the floor.

  The DIY store’s parking lot was full. Natascha was ordered to wait in the van until she was told to get out. Then she was to walk into the store in front of Priklopil and not make a sound. Inside he directed her down the aisles with a slight pressure on her shoulder.

  Natascha looked for someone she could turn to for help, but everyone seemed self-absorbed and unfriendly. She began to feel that, if she asked anyone for help, Priklopil would simply brush it off, saying that there was something wrong with her or that it was a practical joke. He would not have to kill anyone to cover up his crime because no one would take her seriously.

  Then a sales assistant asked: “Can I help you?”

  “No thanks,” said Priklopil. “We’re fine.”

  Once again, she had missed her opportunity to break free.

  That night, she lay awake for a long time. She realized that she could not involve anyone else in her escape from captivity. She had to do it all herself. Somehow she would have to find the strength.

  Natascha had been keeping a secret diary that included a record of her beatings. Now she used it to build up her resolve. She wrote a list of instructions to herself. She was not to react to his abuse and the things he did to undermine her self-confidence. No matter what he said or did, she must not react in any way. Sh
e told herself that she must be stronger. But most of all, she must “never, never give up.” When she plunged into despair, she read the list of instructions out loud.

  She realized that, at first, she had spent all her effort trying to get out of the cellar; then she had strived to get out of the house. She had achieved both of those goals. What she had to do now was escape his controlling influence. And she had a secret weapon—Priklopil himself. When they went out, she noticed that he was in a state of near panic. She could feel him shaking. The man was conflicted. He was torn between wanting to live a seemingly normal life with her and the fear that she would destroy everything by trying to escape. It was a conflict that she could exploit.

  The next time they went out, they were stopped at a police checkpoint. While Priklopil handed over his papers, Natascha weighed the options. This was a perfect opportunity to escape, but again her thoughts turned to the safety of others. If she jumped out of the car and sought help from the police, Priklopil might take off and crash into the oncoming traffic. She stayed her hand. The police officer said his papers were in order and handed them back. Another opportunity had been lost.

  As Natascha approached her eighteenth birthday, Priklopil talked about taking her on a ski trip. She had always wanted to learn to ski. He was a practiced skier and took her to buy some ski pants. She stood in the changing room while he handed her pair after pair. At last she could see herself in a mirror. She was pale and emaciated with thin hair. Seeing herself was torture. She was so pitifully thin that even extra-small pants were too large. Eventually, they had to get ski pants from a children’s store. In the end, she was relieved to get back in the car. She found it distressing to be around people. The brightly colored clothes stirred memories of what it was like to have a normal life.