Every Parents Worse Nightmares

Parents really need to read the book of  Natascha Kampusch, the young Austrian girl who was abducted at the age of  ten for eight and a half  years. It's everyone's worst nightmare especially parents, read it to know more about what abductors do and say to kids when they take them, the psychology they play on them. It's a must read. 

Here are some excerpt from her book " 3096 Days" , from Mail Online

My 8 years trapped in a psychopath's dungeon

Natascha Kampusch 

What made me lift my head at that moment during my walk to school? A noise? A bird? I no longer remember; in any case, my eyes focused on a white delivery van.

It was parked on the street and seemed strangely out of place. A man was standing in front of the van, glancing around aimlessly, as if waiting for something. A sudden wave of fear made the hairs on the back of my neck stand up.

A carefree Natascha before she was kidnapped

Images and fragments of sentences raced through my head: don't talk to strange men . . . don't climb into strange cars . . . this walk to school was my test  -  I'd only recently persuaded my mother to let me go on my own.

I wanted to prove that, at ten, I was no longer a little child  -  yet I still hadn't quite conquered my fears.

In fact, that very morning, on March 2, 1998, I'd made a resolution: from now on, I'd try to be strong. this would be the first day of my new life and the last day of my old one.

It seems ironic now that it was precisely that day that my life as I knew it came to an end  -  in a way I couldn't possibly have imagined. The day hadn't started well.

My father, who was separated from my mother, had delivered me home late the night before, and she was so angry that she said I could never see him again. So when it was time to leave for school, I decided to punish her by not saying goodbye.

At the front door of my flat, I hesitated, thinking of what she'd told me a dozen times before: 'You should never part in anger. You never know if we'll ever see each other again!'

Even so, I left without giving my mother a kiss. 'What could happen anyway?' I mumbled to myself.

Out on the street, my courage evaporated. I began to cry. But when I'd come within about two metres of the man beside the van, he looked me straight in the eye.

And at that moment, my fear instantly vanished. He had blue eyes, and his gaze was strangely empty; he seemed lost and very vulnerable.

Oddly, I even felt a fleeting desire to help him. Then everything happened very fast. At the very moment I lowered my eyes and started walking past, he grabbed me by the waist and threw me through the open door of his van.

It was like a choreographed scene, as if we'd rehearsed it together. A choreography of terror.

Wolfgang Priklopil abducted Natascha Kampusch when she was ten

Did I scream? I don't think so. Yet everything inside me was one single scream. It pushed upwards and became lodged far down in my throat.

Did I fight back? I must have, because the next day I had a black eye. I remember only a feeling of paralysing helplessness.

The kidnapper had an easy time of it. He was about 5ft 6in tall, while I was only 4ft 9in. Plus, my heavy school bag hindered my mobility. The whole thing had taken just a few seconds.

But the moment the van door closed behind me, I was well aware of the fact that I'd just been kidnapped  -  and would probably die. There'd been two horrific kidnapping cases in the past couple of months.

In my mind's eye, I saw TV images from the funeral of an 11-year-old girl called Jennifer, who'd been molested and then strangled after trying to escape from a van.

And then there was Carla, aged 12, who'd been found floating in a pond. Those reports had really got under my skin. One thing had consoled me, though: I was chubby  -  over 7st on my 10th birthday  -  nothing like the delicate girls that child molesters seemed to prefer.

What would it be like to die? Would it be painful? The kidnapper's voice brought me back to the present.

He ordered me to sit down on the floor at the back of the van and not to move. If I didn't do what he said, I'd be in for a nasty surprise.

Then, as we drove off, I heard him frantically punching numbers into his phone. But he couldn't seem to reach anyone. The windows were blacked out, apart from a narrow strip along the upper edge, so I couldn't tell where we were going.

Talk. You have to talk to him, I thought. absurdly, I asked what size shoes he wore. I'd remembered from watching Crimewatch-type programmes that even the slightest detail was important.

Naturally, I didn't get an answer. 'Are you going to molest me?' was my next question. This time I got an answer. 'You're too young for that,' he said. 'I'd never do that.' Then he made another call.

After he'd hung up, he said, 'I'm going to take you to a forest and turn you over to the others. Then I'll be able to wash my hands of this business. We'll never see each other again.'

I went rigid with fear. he didn't need to say any more: I knew what he meant. Child pornography rings had been all over the media for months. What seemed in store for me now seemed even worse than death.

Eventually, we came to a stop in a pine forest. The kidnapper turned off the engine and made another call. Something appeared to have gone wrong. He seemed frightened, agitated. He got out and ordered me not to move.

I obeyed, picturing vividly in my mind how 'the others' would chase me, grab me and throw me to the ground. I even saw myself as a corpse, buried under a pine tree. The kidnapper's words made me jump. 'They're not coming.' Then he got back in the van, started the engine and drove off again.

The house and hidden room in a suburb of Vienna where Natascha spent eight years as a captive

We came to a standstill in a garage. There, he wrapped me up in a blue blanket and picked me up like a package. I felt him carry me down some steps: to a cellar?

It seemed an eternity before he put me down. I heard his footsteps moving away. then I held my breath and listened. Nothing.

I was on a cold floor, in total darkness. The room smelled of dust and the stale air was strangely warm. I rolled myself into a ball and whimpered softly. But my voice sounded so peculiar that I became frightened and stopped.

The hidden room where Natascha was held captive for 8 years

Eventually, he came back with a light bulb that he screwed into a fixture on the wall. Under the harsh light, I could see I was in a room of five square metres, whose walls were covered with wood panelling. a pallet bed was fixed to the wall on hooks.

A loo with no lid stood in the corner and there was a double stainless-steel sink along one wall. The kidnapper started speaking in a voice that people usually reserve for pets; gentle and placating.

I was not to be afraid, everything was going to be all right if I did what I was told. He looked at me like a child eyeing his new toy, full of anticipation and at the same time uncertain what to do with it.

I begged him to let me go: 'I won't tell anybody. I'll just say that I ran away.' But it was no use. He made it unequivocally clear that I'd be spending the night here.

Had I been able to foresee that this room would be my prison for eight-and-a-half years, I don't know how I would have reacted. Looking back now, I realise that just knowing I'd have to stay that first night triggered a reaction that probably saved my life.

Instead of railing against the kidnapper, I simply accepted what had happened. He asked what I required  -  as if I were staying the night in a hotel.

'A hairbrush, a toothbrush, toothpaste and a toothbrush cup. An empty yoghurt pot will do,' I said.

 The stairs that lead to the cellar where Natascha was kept. It was only when she was allowed out on a rare occasion that she realised the door which led to the cellar was made of reinforced concrete

Then the kidnapper picked up my school bag, which was lying on the floor. When I asked him to leave it  with me, he stared at me and said: 'You could have hidden a transmitter in there and you could use it to call for help. You're trying to trick me and you're playing the innocent on purpose!'

The sudden change in his mood frightened me. Today I realise his words were the first indication that the kidnapper was mentally ill. Back then, such transmitters didn't even exist  -  but his delusion was real. I'd fallen victim to a paranoid psychopath and become a play figure in his sick fantasy world.

Yet as the door clicked shut, I'd have done anything to get him to stay. Anything rather than be alone. When he backed out of the room, the walls seemed to move in on me, the ceiling seemed to cave downwards.

As an adult, I've often reflected on how I managed to live through the early days of my incarceration. Today, I know that I regressed psychologically back to the age of four or five, when a child accepts the world around her as a given.

I'd only have to do what the kidnapper asked and everything would be all right. Everything would proceed as it always did: the bedtime ritual, my mother's hand on my duvet, the goodnight kiss, the quiet tiptoe out of the room.

So when the kidnapper came back later, I asked him to put me to bed properly and tell me a goodnight story. I even asked him for a goodnight kiss. Anything to preserve the illusion of normality.

And he played along. He covered me with a thin blanket and sat down on the floor. Then, almost timidly, he began to read The Princess and the Pea, which he'd found in my bag. At the end, he kissed my forehead.

The next day, I looked at him properly. At 35, he had soft features and neatly parted brown hair. It was only when you observed him for a longer period that you noticed the traces of madness lurking beneath his conservative exterior.

Soon, my dungeon began to fill up. First, the kidnapper brought me some of his old clothes; then a sunlounger; a large electric heater; a hotplate, a small oven, a video machine and screen.

But it didn't take long for him to show me his other face. 'If you're not good, then I'll have to tie you up,' he'd say. He told me my parents had refused to pay a ransom. 'Your parents don't love you at all . . . They don't want you back . . . They're happy to be rid of you.'

These statements were like acid. Systematically, he was undermining my belief in my family. Meanwhile, I intuitively adapted, the way you adapt to the incomprehensible customs of people in a foreign country.

A daily routine developed. He'd bring down a patio table, two folding chairs and some dishes. Then we'd sit down together and eat a precooked meal.

In the evening, he washed me in the stainless steel sink. Unaccustomed to being naked in front a strange man, I eyed him uncertainly. But he scrubbed me down as if I were a car.

As the weeks went by, he dominated me more and more. I wasn't allowed to look him directly in the face. I had to ask permission if I wanted to stand up, sit down, turn my head or speak. He even accompanied me to the loo.

Then he installed an intercom (he'd once been a communications engineer), with a microphone so powerful that it broadcast every noise I made. If I failed to answer him right away, he’d yell into the loudspeaker until my head throbbed.

I felt his presence in every corner — always there, breathing at the other end of the line. 

Six months after my abduction, I became seriously depressed. I longed for the profound feeling of security I’d always had when my mother wrapped me in a towel after a hot bath. 

Couldn’t I take a bath, just once? I kept asking. And, one day, he ­surprised me by agreeing.

‘If you scream, I’ll have to hurt you,’ he warned. ‘All the windows and exits have been secured with explosive devices — if you open a window, you’ll blow yourself up.’

If I failed to follow his orders down to the last detail, he’d kill me on the spot, he said.

He ordered me to follow him. That’s when I discovered that the door to ‘upstairs’ was a monster made of reinforced concrete. I can hardly put into words what I felt when I saw that door. I’d been encased in concrete. Hermetically sealed.

The concrete door opened into a tiny passageway that I had to crawl through on my hands and knees. There was a massive safe to one side, which my kidnapper pushed in front of the entrance and screwed into the wall every time he left me in the dungeon. And a dresser that concealed both safe and passageway. I knew now that nobody would ever find me.

The house was dim, as all the blinds had been let down. In the bathroom,the kidnapper watched as I undressed and got in the bath. I was already used to him seeing me naked, so I protested only meekly.

Once I sank into the warm water and closed my eyes, I was able to blot out everything around me. My mind carried me back to our bathroom at home, into the arms of my mother, who was waiting with a large, pre-warmed towel.

A little while later, he installed a bunkbed and shelves in my dungeon. 'Why are you screwing that board?' I asked, as he worked at a bookcase with a drill.

For a second, I'd forgotten I wasn't allowed to speak without permission. He bellowed and threw the heavy drill at me.

In the split second before it slammed into the wall, I managed to duck. The message was clear: if I disobeyed, he was going to seriously hurt me.

Yet I was still a child, and I needed the consolation of touch. So, after a few months underground, I asked my kidnapper to embrace me.

It was difficult. I went into a claustrophobic panic when he held me too tight. After several attempts, though, we managed to find a way  -  not too close, not too tight, and yet tight enough so that I could imagine feeling a loving, caring touch.

A year-and-a-half after my abduction, he suddenly told me: 'You're no longer Natascha. Now you belong to me.' And he stripped away the last shreds of my identity by ordering me to pick a new name.

I chose the name 'Bibiane' from a saints calendar, and that was my identity for the next seven years.

Not long afterwards, he finally told me his own name: Wolfgang Priklopil. I knew as soon as he said it that he'd never let me leave the house alive.

Source 

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