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VIENNA - A year after escaping a kidnapper who held her for eight years, Austria's Natascha Kampusch says she feels increasingly sorry for her captor, calling him a "poor soul, lost and misguided".
Snatched as a freckle-faced 10-year-old on her way to school, Kampusch was forced to live in a cell beneath a house garage from 1998 until her dramatic escape in August 2006, which turned her into an international media sensation. Her 44-year-old captor committed suicide after she fled.
"I told him one day 'I will dance on your grave' but I meant it in a cynical way, and of course this was not the case," Kampusch, 19, told broadcaster ORF according to a transcript of an interview.
"Although, there was a certain sense of satisfaction, a kind of victory - it was always clear that there could be only one of us two, and in the end that turned out to be me, not him."
"I felt a little bit of regret, of pity," she said. "All I can say is that I feel more and more sorry for him."
Kampusch spent most of her teenage years in the tiny, windowless cell and only made her escape when her kidnapper, Wolfgang Priklopil, was distracted by a phone call as she was cleaning his car in the driveway of his home.
"What he did to me has become more distant, (but) it does not fade away, it boils up again and again," she said. "I just try to handle these memories as well as I can, and try to work through them."
The story of her dash to freedom, but also her relationship to Priklopil, with whom she occasionally went shopping and skiing, held media audiences spellbound around the globe.
Kampusch explained why she bade farewell to Priklopil's coffin after his suicide.
"I said farewell, and why shouldn't I have done so? It was important to me, because the last time I saw him alive was when he turned his back to me and I ran away head over heels, but I only said farewell to his coffin, I didn't actually see him."
Kampusch likened her relationship with Priklopil to a wrestling match in which both sides tried to gain the upper hand and also said she had kept the clothing he had provided for her.
"They bear certain memories, these socks and T-shirts kept me warm and I need to keep them - at least for a certain time."
After her escape, Kampusch found herself chased by photographers and journalists and has received offers for film and book rights from Austria and abroad.
Yet while Kampusch has shielded herself behind an army of psychiatrists, media advisers and lawyers marketing and handling her case and has only given a small number of interviews, some in her family opted for the limelight.
Her mother launched an emotional book about her own eight years without Natascha earlier this month, describing Kampusch's father, whom she divorced, as an alcoholic and only referred to him by his surname.
Kampusch said she found such behaviour disrespectful and inappropriate, and called her father's interaction with the media "naive", adding she might have to distance herself if her family life would deteriorate to a celebrity reality show.
"You will rarely, or even never, see me crying, sobbing or breaking down in public. I'll sort that out in private."
Kampusch has been busy catching up on her education, learning how to drive, and took up archery to help her focus. She also said she was still trying to find her own definition of the parameters of human interaction like friendship.
"There are many people who abuse one's trust, and this is very grave," said Kampusch, who flew to Spain for the ORF television special and spent her first day at the seaside. "I haven't quite found out for myself how to define friendship."
- REUTERS
