Kidnap victim Natascha Kampusch tells the harrowing story of her abduction in Channel 5’s The Girl in the Cellar: 8 Years Underground.
She disappeared at the age of 10-years-old in Vienna in 1998.
After eight and a half years kept in a dungeon – 3,096 days – she eventually escaped.
But her ordeal didn’t end there.
In The Girl in the Cellar: 8 Years Underground (Tuesday, January 17, 2023), Natascha reveals how the conspiracy theories and lack of public empathy have impacted her life in the years following her ordeal.
Here’s everything you need to know the subject of the Channel 5 documentary.
Who is kidnap victim Natascha Kampusch?
Natascha lived with her mum in the Donaustadt.
She was just 10 years old when she was kidnapped.
She was held captive in a house on the outskirts of Vienna for 3096 days.
Natascha was kept in a dungeon three metres below ground.
Against the odds, Austrian Natascha was found alive eight years after she was kidnapped.
When was Natascha kidnapped?
Wolfgang Priklopil kidnapped Natascha on March 2, 1998, in broad daylight in Vienna.
She says: “I got up. I don’t remember if I even had breakfast, because I had a fight with my mum the day before.
“I just went to school, like a normal child.”
However, Wolfgang Priklopil was waiting by his white Mercedes van…
As Natascha walked past him on her way to school, he grabbed her.
She fought back, but he was stronger.
She says: “I tried to scream but it turned into a rasp.”
He warned her “don’t fight back”.
Wolfgang laid Natascha down in the back of the gang and “pressed down” on her.
He got in the front of the van and drove away.
Natascha says: “I asked him if he was going to kill me or bury me in the woods, but he told me to keep quiet.”
She adds: “I was wrapped in a blanket, and then carried down to the basement.
“Then I was placed in the darkness, a dark room, the dungeon. I was in shock.
“It was pitch black. I kept on thinking that someone would come and find me, that my mum and school would be missing me.
“I was convinced the police would come and save me, like in the movies and on TV.”
Natascha reveals that Wolfgang eventually put a lightbulb in, but would decide how often the light would stay on, so Natascha had no sense of what time or day it was.
He took away her shoes and burned them.
What did the police do about Natascha Kampusch’s kidnap?
Police began a massive manhunt involving helicopters – the largest Austria had ever seen – but there was still no trace if Natascha.
Police received a tip off about a white minibus, but did not investigate it for two weeks.
They also misses other opportunities to apprehend Wolfgang Priklopil.
Natascha’s family believed she could have run away.
The documentary reveals that the new boyfriend of Natascha’s mother didn’t like the 10-year-old schoolgirl.
Sadly, Natascha had gained a lot of weight in the year before she was kidnapped.
Her mother’s partner “always mocked her because of her body weight”.
She was an unhappy child after her parents separated because her parents fought a lot.
Where was Natascha kept?
Natascha was kept in a basement under the garage.
A heavy iron cabinet covered a hatch leading to another level underground, and there were multiple safety doors installed in front of the dungeon.
A 150kg heavy door to the cell was completely concealed and soundproofed.
Wolfgang spent four years preparing and building the dungeon.
Once there, he tried to mould Natascha into who he wanted her to be with manipulation and rewards. He did not like her crying.
Instead he rewarded ‘good behaviour’ with Barbie dolls and toys.
When she cried, he used violence against her.
He even shaved her hair and made her live bald for a while.
Wolfgang held Natascha hostage for almost nine years – 3,096 days.
Much of her captivity was spent in the secret basement measuring five square metres, where she was both starved and abused.
After four years in the dungeon, Wolfgang allowed Natascha to use other rooms in the house.
Was kidnap victim Natascha Kampusch raped?
Natascha has revealed she was raped by her kidnapper Wolfgang Priklopil during the eight-and-a-half years she was held captive at his house.
She believes that Wolfgang saw their relationship as one of boyfriend and girlfriend, or man and wife.
Tellingly, she rarely uses his name, and refuses to talk in detail about the sexual abuse she endured.
She does reveal that she was controlled, violently beaten and abused during the ordeal.
Natascha describes herself as “a creature Wolfgang could shape”.
How did Natascha escape?
In 2006, Natascha Kampusch managed to escape.
She ran away on August 23 2006 while Wolfgang Priklopil took a phone call.
Natascha weighed the exact same amount when she escaped to when she was first kidnapped – 42 kg.
Who was Natascha Kampusch’s kidnapper Wolfgang Priklopil?
Wolfgang Priklopil was a 35-year-old man without a job or girlfriend.
He lived a very isolated life in his mum’s house – his childhood home in Strasshof on the outskirts of Vienna.
He was born on May 14, 1962, and was 44 when he died.
How did Wolfgang Priklopil die?
After Natascha escaped after nearly nine years in captivity, Wolfgang Priklopoil took his own life before the police were able to catch him.
He killed himself by lying down in front of a train shortly after her escape.
What happened to Natascha after she escaped?
Only two weeks after her escape, Natascha gave her first interview to the media, where she relived the worst parts of her imprisonment.
Christoph Feurstein conducted Natascha’s first public interview.
However, when she told her story to the world, she was met with mistrust and condemnation.
She has been subjected to speculation and victim blaming ever since.
Members of the public accused her of not telling the truth, or found her composure something to distrust.
She felt she was being “victim blamed” for the kidnap.
Natascha was even accused of giving birth to a child, and then killing it.
She says: “Old women came up to me on the street and tried to hit me.
“They called me a liar and a whore.”
Where is Natascha now and how old is she?
Natascha Kampusch now lives in Vienna, Austria.
She is 34 years old.
15 years have passed since she escaped.
She has written books and appeared on multiple TV shows talking about her ordeal.
Natasha in her own words: What does she say now?
Natascha relives her ordeal in The Girl in the Cellar on Channel 5.
She reveals: “He weighed the food.
“He always said I was too fat, and just wanted me to be as weak as possible, so I couldn’t fight back.
“Wolfgang kept repeating things verbatim, like I didn’t have an identity, that I was his creature, that I was basically his slave.
“He wanted to convey the feeling that it was his right to exercise violence.”
Talking about the items she has kept since her escape, she says: “My mum tells me to throw all the things away [from my time in the dungeon]. But I can’t. Those are my things.
“These were my personal belongings for eight and a half years.”
These include the actual dress she was wearing on the day she was kidnapped.
Why has kidnap victim Natascha Kampusch been the subject of abuse?
Tragically, Natascha’s ordeal did not end when she escaped.
She explains: “The people did not believe my story.
“I was sometimes not able to go on the street without getting attacked from any random person.
“I expected to come out in the world with justice, with understanding. But it was not that situation.
“People think they know me, and which dark places I was before or through which rough times I went. But I don’t think so.”
Members of the public have turned against Natascha after she admitted “feelings” for her kidnapper.
Did Natascha Kampusch have Stockholm Syndrome?
Natascha Kampusch admits she began to feel for her kidnapper.
She says: “I suddenly felt for him.
“Like Stockholm Syndrome.”
Stockholm Syndrome refers to kidnap victims who develop an emotional connection to their kidnappers.
However, Mark T. Hofmann, Crime and Intelligence Analyst ‘profiler’ says this is not a syndrome but a “survival strategy”.
He believes she would have died otherwise.
Who is kidnap victim Natascha Kampusch’s mum?
Natascha’s mum is Brigitta Sirny.
She says: “[On the day of the kidnap] Natascha didn’t want to get up right away.
“Then she finally got up.
“I always laid out her clothes.
“Something wasn’t to her liking, she grumbled because of that.
“So she got a little cheeky. Because of the tights. They were scratchy and she didn’t want to wear them.
“I insisted that she put them on, so she got mad at me, of course. She showed me her tongue.
“I think you shouldn’t part ways on bad terms. Who knows if you’ll see each other again?”
Because of their row, Natascha wanted to walk to school alone, and did not turn back to wave at her mum. It was only the fourth or fifth time she had ever walked to school on her own.
Brigitta returned from work at 3pm, like any other day. This was eight hours after her daughter was kidnapped.
She says: “So I went home and waited for Natascha. I called the daycare centre and they told me that Natascha didn’t go there that day.
“It felt like somebody was pulling the ground away from underneath me.”
She went to the police immediately.
However, the media and members of the public believed for a long time that she had something to do with Natascha’s disappearance.
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The Girl in the Cellar: 8 Years Underground airs on Tuesday, January 16, 2023 at 10pm on Channel 5.
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