Austrian girl found after 8 years as hostage

[faceless]

Austrian girl 'found' after 8 years

More details have emerged in Austria suggesting that a woman found near Vienna on Wednesday is a schoolgirl who vanished eight years ago. The passport of Natascha Kampusch was found at the house where she was allegedly imprisoned and the woman had the same distinctive scar as the girl. DNA test results are due later on Thursday which Austrian police expect will confirm the woman's identity.

The suspected kidnapper died after throwing himself in front of a train. The man, named in Austrian media as Wolfgang Priklopil, had been chased by police earlier on Wednesday evening and his red BMW car was later found abandoned.

The schoolgirl's disappearance at the age of 10 had sparked a huge manhunt eight years ago. The woman says she is Natasha Kampusch and relatives of the missing girl say they are confident she is telling the truth. Natasha Kampusch vanished as she walked to school. The woman - said to be in good health - says she was abducted and held captive in a sealed garage at the house in Strasshof, in the Gaenserndorf area on Vienna's northeastern outskirts.

Police were called when she was found staggering in a garden nearby. It is not clear what the kidnapper's motives were. Police say he had no connection to the girl's family and there had been no ransom demand. Police have searched the garage, and say it looked like a dungeon. Austrian media report that the room had a cavity measuring four by three metres (yards), with an entrance measuring 50cm by 50cm. They believe it was blocked with a sound-proof safe whenever the kidnapper left the scene.


Suspected kidnapper Wolfgang Priklopil (pic: Austrian police)
Wolfgang Priklopil was a 44-year-old telecoms technician
A bed and bookshelf with children's books were reportedly also found there. "She is white-pale, looking as if she had been out of the light of day for a long time, but she articulated well and could read and write," the Austria Press Agency quoted a police investigator as saying. APA also reported that she burst into tears on Wednesday night when she met the man believed to be her father, Ludwig Koch, at the police station.

Ms Kampusch's disappearance in 1998 shocked Austria and triggered a search that extended into Hungary and included the dredging of riverbeds.

According to police, before committing suicide Wolfgang Priklopil had called a friend for help on Wednesday, saying he was being pursued by police for drink-driving. Psychologists quoted by Austrian media say they believe the woman suffered from "Stockholm Syndrome" - a psychological condition in which captives begin to sympathise with their kidnappers. Priklopil had been questioned by police in April 1998, as one of more than 1,000 owners of white vans. He was later released. A schoolfriend of Ms Kampusch had told police the girl had been abducted in a white van.

Police are investigating whether the woman had been beaten or sexually abused by the kidnapper.

Click here to watch the BBC report...

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Here's hoping they manage to sort her head out after that...

[Skylace]

Poor girl. This isn't going to be easy.

[eefanincan]

So glad that she's been found. Usually these types of stories don't have a positive ending. Hopefully she can get adjusted back into society and lead a fairly normal life.

[IRiSHMaFIA]

It's going to take a lot of therapy for her to get sorted and comfortable with a normal life again. Eight years of being a prisoner like that won't be easy to undo.

With support from her family they'll be able to help her adjust, but it's something she'll suffer and relive the rest of her life I'm sure.

I think the kidnapper did everyone a favour by killing himself. Anyone that can kidnap a child and hold her in a setting like that for so many years is a waste of space.

[Gasman59]

This story blew my mind when I first heard about it the other day...
That girl is lucky to still be alive !! I just hope she can seek the right kind of help.

[faceless]

Here's a pic of the girl - she looks a lot different than what I expected really... though I'm not sure what I expected!

click here to read the full Reuters story

[zoe]

I?m glad the whole world heard of that...
It?s a very tragic story, today Natascha?s first interview was on
tv here in Austria...I just can say, if you get the chance to read or watch an interview of her, just do it!
I think it?s very important that everybody knows about this story
`cause you cannot know what?s going on in your neighbours house....

[IRiSHMaFIA]

[eefanincan]

[faceless]

From what I heard of the interview she fantasised about chopping the guy's head off and wanting to escape. Smashing!

Though the picture on that mag cover does make her seem a bit too heroic...it's got almost a feeling of propaganda about it.

[IRiSHMaFIA]

[zoe]

I think she will go back to normal life, but the media is a big problem for her, she told us in the interview she had to go inkognito in a ice saloon, just to "escape" from the reporters!
I think that?s crazy....
She also told us that she?s gonna get her general qualification for university entrace (don?t know if this is right^^) ?cause she wants to go to university but that?s just possible without so much media, I think

[eefanincan]

[faceless]

I posted a documentary about her story earlier this year - you can watch it by clicking HERE

[faceless]

The horror basement where sisters were raped for 41 years by their father and slowly went mad
Allan Hall
26th August 2011

This is the disgusting dungeon where an Austrian man violated his own daughters in a nightmare spanning 15,000 days and nights. 'If you fight back, then I will kill you,' Gottfried W. told his children Christine, 53, and Erika, 45, who were forced to sleep at night on a wooden shelf while their father, now 80, snoozed in a feather bed. Amid farming implements, old oil drums, wood, cement sacks and filth he violated his own flesh and blood with a depravity on a par with Josef Fritzl.

His wife Berta, 85, passed away in 2008. She too was a victim of the former council labourer's sadism, beaten like them with a stick and poked with a pitchfork. The girls became mentally ill over the years - not a condition they were born with, but a result of the torments they suffered at his hands. Police say their mother, also beaten into submission, made them promise on her deathbed not to tell anyone about what their father did to them.

Other rooms in the sprawling house near Braunau-am-Inn - the birthplace of Adolf Hitler - were kept spic and span. But the girls were forced to live in squalor, sleep in the kitchen and use a commode instead of the lavatory in the house. Forty years of abuse ended in May this year when Gottfried tried to have his way with Christine one more time and she finally snapped. She hit him with a milk jug on the head. He fell to the floor and cracked his head again. For two days he was unable to move and police say they hoped he would die.

Finally the women, who were seen from time to time by a social worker - but who were so conditioned by his threats never to expose his vile treatment of them - called her in. She telephoned for an ambulance for him and the women were taken into care. But still they said nothing. It was only in June when they opened up to a Red Cross worker about what had happened to them. It was this volunteer who called in the police.

Austria - still coming to terms with the kidnapping of schoolgirl Natascha Kampusch in the 90s and the Fritzl incest saga - is stunned at another terrible family crime being exposed within its borders. Gottfried, known as Friedl to neighbours, was an archetypal Austrian father of the old school. He was stern, rigid, master of his house and keeper of the secrets that went inside it. He controlled all social contact of his daughters with the outside world. The only time they were seen out together was with him visiting the grave of their mother.

Gottfried has been moved to a prison in nearby Ried while the investigation against him continues; his daughters are undergoing psychiatric therapy in a clinic. He faces charges of rape, unlawful imprisonment, cruelty, assault and making threats to kill. He was moved from an OAP home where he had been treated since his injuries in May to the jail on Thursday.

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makes my blood run cold...