Struggling with freedom

last updated 8 January 2015

Vienna

An 18-year-old Austrian who escaped from the man who had kept her locked up since she was 10 may be suffering from Stockholm syndrome. Natascha Kampusch was a pudgy schoolgirl in 1998, when she was abducted by loner Wolfgang Priklopil, then 36. For the first year, he made her call him “Master.” Later on he began to let her out of the basement to do chores. And eventually she came to call him “Wolfi.” Natascha escaped two weeks ago after finding a door unlocked. Priklopil killed himself by diving in front of a train just hours later. Since then, Natascha has seen her parents only once and declined to return to them. She’s told reporters that her relationship with Priklopil was too complex to be explained, and said living in his captivity was not that awful. Psychologists describe her as “deeply traumatized.”