Girl in the Cellar

by Allan Hall

  At present she is undergoing therapy with a person who has got double qualifications, both as a psychiatrist and a therapist. She also went to group therapy in the AKH and established a good communication with other group members, some of whom were anorexia patients.

  Fraulein Kampusch insists on meeting Herr Priklopil’s mother, and they will most probably meet at a later stage, as now it is still too early. Frau Priklopil is at the moment receiving psychological counselling as well.

  As for the claims she made for Herr Priklopil’s house, all Fraulein Kampusch said was: ‘That is my house.’ It is a place she knows and is used to; something she could focus on.’ [Natascha would later confirm that she does indeed want to claim the Priklopil home under the Austrian system of compensation for victims of crime, to avoid it being turned into some sort of black museum for the curious and ghoulish. She has indicated that she wants to offer it to her kidnapper’s mother to live in.]

  So far we have not had any evidence that Fraulein Kampusch suffered actual physical violence. She did not speak about beatings and she had no trace of it on her body. There were some blue spots on her legs, but they were not a result of violence.

  Control was much in evidence during Natascha’s accomplished performance in the ORF broadcast. This appeared to go more to the core of her character during the time it was being pre-recorded (in a special room at the hospital) than it did during the broadcast itself. She stormed out of her seat during the first question, refused to answer any questions about intimacy, stopped during the filming to look at takes of herself to see how she was coming across on screen and, in the words of one studio assistant, ‘generally behaved as if she was in Hollywood already.’

  As she sat before the cameras, Christoph Feurstein, the interviewer, asked her if she had been lonely during captivity. ‘What a ridiculous question,’ snapped Natascha, who immediately got up and left the room. She returned after a pause.

  Neither was the interview, which was watched by up to 90 per cent of Austrians who own a TV, an exercise in spontaneity of any kind. Rather, before it was recorded, she had spent four hours with her ‘media adviser’ doing the kind of trial run politicians undergo to ensure they don’t get pinned to the wall during debates at election time. She was told how to sit, how to look, how to handle herself.

  She was groomed. In much the same way that Wolfi once groomed her, except that this time she had total, not partial control. She crossed out any potential questions about sex, about love, about the true nature of her relationship with the kidna—with the man she spent her childhood with. One scene in which she didn’t like the look of her teeth was duly edited out.

  ‘She commands her advisers as if they are her slaves, and they are all very servile,’ one person from the elite group allowed access to Natascha told the authors in an interview for the book.

  Her youth lawyer, Monica Pintertis, was naturally cautious about her zeal for micromanaging a media campaign. She advised Natascha that she should be easing herself back into life gently. But her caution was met with a blunt refusal to slow down. ‘My first instinct was to tell her to leave, to let the sun shine on her stomach for a bit and relax,’ says Pintertis. ‘But that’s not what she wanted. And when Frau Kampusch sets her mind on something, you can’t talk her out of it.’

  The interviews, the pace at which she dictated them, the fact that she wanted to bury herself in starchy legal contracts instead of smelling the roses as a free agent, speaks, for many, of another agenda and another component in this anything-but-simple saga. The remark from her lawyer earlier in this book, that he didn’t want his client to be thought of as anything other than a victim after the skiing excursion was revealed, goes to the heart of this matter.

  Natascha’s advisers are aware that she must be preserved as a victim if she is to garner the world’s sympathy and Hollywood’s money. As Germany’s Der Spiegel magazine succinctly put it: ‘Natascha’s advisers were quick to discover she doesn’t just need protection and therapy. She needs to be managed like a star. And the people who are managing her now are among the best Austria has to offer. The lawyers Gerald Ganzger and Gabriel Lansky have joined the group; they’re experts on media legislation and compensation cases.’

  Natascha not loving her mother, and staying away from her father, were classified in meetings as ‘bad spin’. So was news that she had might have had opportunities to escape before but didn’t.

  The lawyers thought they had nailed down the bad press with the triple-strike interviews in print and on TV. But public opinion is fickle, and soon the roses, flowers and cards that once choked the hallways of the hospital where she spent her first weeks were replaced by a cyberspace campaign bordering on sheer hatred.

  Websites and newspapers were deluged in the second week of September 2006 with hate mail taunting her as being a fraud and a liar, a lot of it triggered when her initial denial of going on a ski outing with Priklopil later had to be corrected by the lawyers. One critic in Austria wrote: ‘My opinion is victims act differently than you, and you enjoyed your time with your “kidnapper”.’ Others said ‘You’re a liar’ and ‘She is playing us all for fools.’

  ‘You were a victim as a kid, sure, but no one is quite sure about the later years,’ said another. On the Internet in Austria it became fashionable to even question her captivity, with many people writing on forums that her mother knew of the imprisonment because she herself carried on a relationship with Priklopil.

  That there was a relationship of sorts between Natascha and Priklopil is indisputable. What has not been confirmed by anyone is whether or not it was ever physical.

  Her father, Ludwig Koch, spoke out about this ‘hate campaign against my daughter’. He said: ‘If these idiots could speak face to face with my daughter for just one minute they would stop their hateful lies immediately. She is not as stable after all these years in captivity as the interviews suggest. As a victim of a horrendous criminal she deserves all our support, not least all our respect.’

  But the way that Natascha has evaded questions about the precise nature of her relationship with Priklopil—and even lied—has turned many against her. This will be the final chapter in her re-entry into a world she never really knew as a child. How people will eventually perceive her will have everything to do with truth and nothing to do with the threatening embossed letters of a lawyer and a media adviser riding the coat-tails of a shooting star.

  For her father, Ludwig, the media circus is a perplexing one. He cherishes memories of times past, of the days spent in Hungary when life was more innocent. He has heartfelt words for his daughter as she struggles to find out who she is and where she is headed. Those heartfelt words of his are worth infinitely more than the words of those who merely want to tear her down for not behaving in the way they want her to. Ludwig told the authors:

  People are always asking if Natascha is closest to me or her mother, but she is independent, she makes her own decisions, as I do. She may not want me to do all the things I do, but I do them and she accepts that. At the start, for example, she had not been happy about me talking to the media, but now she doesn’t care, she knows I wouldn’t say anything bad about her. And I won’t interfere in her private sphere.

  My wife had a birthday on Saturday 23 September and she had invited Natascha. It was all planned to give my wife a treat. Natascha and I had arranged that she would tell my wife she was too busy and could not make it, and then she turned up as an early surprise. She was here for three hours or so and she wanted to look at everything. She asked a lot of questions about why we had done what we had done, putting down bricks over the grass in the back garden, for example. And a large part of the house was a small bakery when she was kidnapped, and now that is my living-room. To be honest I’m still not finished with the rebuilding work, and I didn’t know she would be coming so soon. I had to rush to try and tidy it up a bit so that it looked as good as possible, and I don’t know that I did a very good job in hiding the rubble.
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  She saw her cat, which she had not seen since she was a kitten. It was a very moving moment. The cat is a grumpy, bad-tempered animal which only my wife can control. It pays no attention to anyone else and only comes when she calls it. The cat won’t come anywhere near me. But when Natascha arrived the cat was there in an instant, rubbing itself against her legs. She was also pleased to see we had a dog, our Pekinese who’s also called Ludwig.

  His wife Georgina said: ‘The kitten was the one that Natascha had bottle fed and that she had called Cindy, but when Natascha vanished her grandmother felt it would be good luck to re-name the baby cat after Natascha in the hope that it might be a sort of good luck charm and bring her back home one day. That was why we called it Tashy.’

  Ludwig Koch takes up the story:

  We were only five or six people here, but I think it was all a bit much for her. She went into the corner of the garden and just sat on her own for a while. She was lost in thought and I realised she wanted to be alone. She wanted to see the room that she had here, but we have rented it out so she could not go there. She also looked at the toy car that I bought her, which I still have, although I had given her other toys away because I wanted other children to have pleasure from them. I only lent them. I told Natascha I knew where they were and could get them back when she returned. She did look at her car and said: ‘At least that is something which is alive as well.’

  I understand why she was so sad, it was all a bit much. You can imagine, all those years with just one other person for occasional company and then suddenly so many people around. She wanted privacy and we respected that. She needed to come to terms with everything and that was why I asked her nothing. Of course I want to know what happened in that cellar, but I want it to be in her own time. I have not looked at pictures of the cellar, I have never seen it, I have never been there, and I don’t want to hear about it. She can tell me when she is ready. I will know at some stage, and in the meantime we just talk about other things. She asked me about her grandmother, she knew that she had died. We didn’t talk about it much. She will go to the grave at some stage, but she is not ready yet. She loved her grandmother.

  It was great to have her here. For so many years all I had here that really connected me to my daughter was something she had made out of clay when she was in the kindergarten, a little ornament that I always treasured, and then suddenly there she was again—I was overcome.

  People are always talking about how she went into the cellar as a little girl and came out as a young woman, but I don’t think that means she has changed at all, she is too strong for that. My relationship with her now is as good and as strong as it was then, whatever people say. Yes, it is true that at the start she didn’t see her parents much, but she had to learn how to deal with those around her. It was not her choice. It was also too soon for her to do the interviews. They rushed her into it and it all happened too fast. She was suddenly out in the world and had to size up the position and the situation and those around her. Now she has taken stock and taken charge. That is not just my opinion, that is her opinion as well…I know that she wants to have children at some stage and have a normal relationship. I haven’t discussed with her what sort of job she wants, all I can say for sure is that whatever it is it will not be working in an office.

  She has to decide how she wants to live her life. I know that she has a lot of ideas. She wants to start this foundation and she wants to help the hungry, as she was often hungry herself, and help women who are abused and children who are abused, as she was a victim herself. What happened to her is something unique. She said she never wanted to be famous, but because of circumstances beyond her control she now is famous, and she wants to use her graduation from eight years inside—she wants it to have a purpose.

  She has a new flat now which is provided by the city of Vienna. I don’t know what she gets up to there. She is living alone but has others around her.

  She has been shopping a bit as well, buying make-up and clothes, but most of the time that was with her lawyers, although I think her sisters have also gone on occasion. I would like her to have more choice of friends to shop with, but much as I love my daughter, I am not a person to go shopping with. She should be with youngsters of her own age.

  But finding people of her own age is a problem. For her there is a huge void where normal teenagers find space for friends, boyfriends, best friends from school, from college, from the disco or the café. Wolfgang Priklopil not only robbed her of her childhood, he robbed her of her social skills too, a deficiency that comes across in her haughty handling of those around her: lawyers, doctors, journalists.

  Then there are her, not unjustified, fears that people will only want to get close to her to get a piece of the Natascha action. She is afraid of people befriending her not for who she is but for who she was and who she will yet become. Filtering out the frauds from the genuine article will not be a job for her legal team. She must learn how to do it, just as she learned German grammar in her cell. And the path she is currently on, paved with legal contracts, lined with TV lights, signposted by media gurus, is not one likely to lead to the human relationships which Natascha desperately needs.

  But she is free. Some might say free to make all the mistakes she wants to.

  8

  Aftermath

  November 2006. The leaves are falling in Vienna, and the trees are dappled gold and yellow, with various hues of brown and ochre as the days grow shorter. It is the first autumn Natascha Kampusch has seen as a free woman in many years. She is fielding the book offers—between 30 and 40 so far—and the numerous script-writing proposals, TV mini-series deals, movie blockbuster scripts and interview requests that flood into her media/legal team’s office every day. She will emerge from her captivity with riches and fame.

  She also has her own apartment, but she doesn’t live alone.

  The ghost of Wolfgang Priklopil lives with her. Those closest to her, and those who have come into contact with her in the days since freedom arrived, say she still thinks of him for much of the time.

  ‘The traces of that are written on this woman’s soul,’ youth psychotherapist Dr Martina Leibovici-Mühlberger, the in-house psychiatrist for the Kurier newspaper, said about her some 50 days after she escaped from Heinestrasse. ‘She is someone who desperately looks for guidance and suppresses her growing fears below the conscious surface with great mastery.’

  Conny Bischofberger and Susanne Bobek, two journalists on the newspaper who interviewed her, had this take on her:

  She is expressing this extreme containment she feels with her body language. In interviews she uses pseudoeloquence, imperfect and conjunctive grammatical tenses spiced with foreign words. Her hands are constantly clutching, her eyes are closing to the glimpses of the past. Those blue eyes look so sad but also emanate so much coldness. A mixture of desperation, shyness and arrogance that renders the conversation partner helpless.

  After 50 days of freedom Natascha Kampusch still lives in the immediate vicinity of the Vienna General Hospital. The care staff of Level 7, the child and adolescence psychiatry, describes her as ‘a rather bossy princess who doesn’t say “thank you” or “you’re welcome”.’ Sometimes she even seems to reflect the cruelty that was imposed upon her for so long.

  Psychologists speak of a ‘Puzzle Personality’: from eloquent and strong, when the situation demands it, to ill-mannered and insulting—more so towards women than towards men.

  From total isolation into the thunderstorm of the global public attention—that cannot end well. Natascha’s body is rebelling against it, she is constantly very ill with a high fever.

  Respect and plain normality are what Natascha Kampusch now needs the most. But instead of that she is surrounded by an atmosphere of voyeurism and blunt profit-making. Lawyers are visiting her on an almost daily basis to proof complicated contracts. It’s all about money, a lot of money. The whole world is fighting for her.

  Natascha Kampusch mourns Wolfgang
Priklopil. This man was her only human contact during eight important years of her life; the one who brought her up, the master of life and death. The nature of this relationship is what the media want to reveal at any price, and the amounts they offer for it are astronomical.

  ‘Can Natascha become healthy ever again?’ Leibovici-Mühlberger asks. ‘Yes. But only if she finally learns to cry, if she lets herself be covered and embraced, instead of treating her wounds with money-making and other plans.’

  There is no doubt she has suffered, and those scars, both mental and physical, will take a long time to heal. She walks slowly and with some difficulty and lack of coordination, much like an old lady, because she is simply not used to walking long distances. High heels are also a problem, but she is said to like them.

  Immediately after she escaped her skin was paper-white and her whole appearance fragile, but now she’s gained a lot of weight. This is partly due to a good diet, but the medication she is on is also a factor.

  Those close to her describe her as very opinionated, wilful, possessed of a very strong personality. They know precisely what she meant when she said that she was stronger than Priklopil.

  Another noticeable trait is the fact that she is a great observer; she can spot the smallest details and is always on the alert when speaking to someone. That is a skill she had to acquire during the years with her sick captor, because she was constantly asking herself what was going on in his head and what he would do next, or what was it that he wanted at a particular moment. Trying always to divine the moods of an unbalanced individual to make her own existence with him that much more bearable.

  On the streets of Vienna she is, by turns, confident and insecure. She senses people often recognise her and then she feels like a ‘strange-coloured dog’ rather than an ‘exotic bird’. She cannot bear crowds: the long years alone with just Priklopil for company have made gatherings a chore for her that she finds deeply unsettling. At the time of writing she has not ventured out alone: there is always someone with her.