An Austrian girl held captive in a windowless cell for eight years before escaping said she had ”sexual contact” with her kidnapper, police said on Saturday.
Federal police spokesperson Erich Zwettler had no further details on the sexual contact disclosed by Natascha Kampusch, now 18.
Kampusch, 10 when kidnapped as she walked to school, managed to evade her abductor on Wednesday when he took a phone call as she was vacuuming his car.
The man, Wolfgang Priklopil, committed suicide by throwing himself under a train after she fled.
Zwettler confirmed a Vienna newspaper report that Kampusch told investigators shortly after she escaped that she had had ”sexual contact” with Priklopil (44) but did not elaborate.
Kampusch’s disappearance in 1998 caused anguish across the Alpine republic and her reappearance long after most had given her up for dead astonished the nation.
Kampusch had been held in a windowless cell below Priklopil’s house. DNA tests on the kidnapper did not link him with any other crimes, police said.
That doused speculation Priklopil might have been a serial stalker of children, police Major-General Gerhard Lang said.
Zwettler said Kampusch was now at a secret, secure location, with psychological carers, and would be spared further questioning until at least Monday.
”She urgently needs a break [from stress]. She wants peace and quiet. She’s an adult now so she can stay where she is as long as she wants,” he said.
Kampusch was briefly reunited with her divorced parents on Wednesday but had not asked to see relatives since.
‘A normal prisoner knows why he is in prison’
”She may have lost her original trust in people, which could lead to rejecting her parents, which has happened to other kidnapping victims,” court psychiatrist Reinhard Haller said.
”A 10-year-old girl left her home and is returning as a traumatised woman. A normal prisoner knows why he is in prison. It’s not so Kafka-esque [as Kampusch’s case].”
The parents, who separated after her abduction, complained on Saturday they had not been told where Natascha was staying.
”Why can’t I see my daughter?” Brigitta Sirny told the Kurier daily in a report released ahead of Sunday’s publication.
”Natascha is shut away once again. It’s terrible for me. Psychologists and doctors — that’s all good and important. But my daughter also needs her mother,” she said.
”I’d like Natascha to live with me again, but she’s 18 now and she’ll decide herself.”
Her father, Ludwig Koch, told the Austria Press Agency: ”Isn’t it crazy that I don’t even know where she is?”
He also said he wanted Natascha to live with him and added Natascha had written to him asking for understanding that she needed to ”find release” over the weekend.
Haller said preventing uncontrolled access to Kampusch was necessary for the time being.
”She has been plunked suddenly in the middle of everyone’s interest. That is a 180-degree turn from what she had been experiencing [for years],” he said.
Monika Pinterits, a children’s lawyer in contact with Kampusch, said the young woman was avoiding self-pity.
”She’s very sensible and eloquent. She’s following the media coverage with great interest. It disturbs her that she is often portrayed as special case. She [doesn’t see herself as] a poor victim, but a grown young woman,” Pinterits told APA.
Kampusch was pallid and trembling when she escaped from her pen in Strasshof, a village outside Vienna, and weighed only 42kg, less than she did as a 10-year-old. – Reuters