Word: kampusch
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...cellar was cold, damp and disgusting ... just imagine if something would have happened to him, or he became weak, I would have been like an Egyptian pharaoh, buried alive and then later dead," Kampusch says in the documentary. At the beginning of her captivity in the 50-sq.-ft. (4.6 sq m) basement, Kampusch recalls how she used to count the seconds to try to keep track of time but soon could no longer tell whether it was day or night. Priklopil reinforced her sense of isolation by installing an intercom and a timer that turned the lights...
...emotion. "He forbade me from crying because he was worried the salt acid could damage his tiles," she says. "When I did cry, as I couldn't help it, he grabbed me on my neck, choked me and he pushed my head under the tap in a basin." Eventually, Kampusch says, Priklopil allowed her into the main part of the house and put her to work, though she didn't specify how. "I was used like his work animal," she says. Obsessive about cleanliness, he punished her when she left fingerprints in the house. He also forced her to cover...
...Kampusch finally escaped in 2006. She was cleaning Priklopil's car in the driveway of the home when he got a phone call. While he was distracted, she dropped the vacuum cleaner and ran as fast as she could to the home of a neighbor, who then called police. Priklopil committed suicide by throwing himself under a train hours later. Three years after the ordeal ended, Kampusch has become a celebrity in Austria. The 21-year-old has hosted her own talk show and has been hounded by film crews desperate to tell her story. She reportedly bought the home...
...filmmakers deliberately steered clear of revealing any personal or intimate details of her captivity. "We respected her boundaries," says Patricia Schlesinger, head of the culture and documentary department at NDR. But Kampusch speaks openly about Priklopil, whom she never refers to by name but simply as "the perpetrator" or "the offender." "I forgave him instantly. Had I not forgiven him, I would have been filled with so much hatred and negative feelings that I couldn't have survived it all - that would have left me psychologically and physically damaged," she says. "The offense was the result of a kind...
...documentary also explores how police bungled the investigation when Kampusch went missing. An officer had named Priklopil as the possible kidnapper at one point, saying his van matched one that was described by witnesses, but after the van was searched and he was questioned, police let him go and ruled him out as a suspect. For Kampusch, it would be yet another missed opportunity for freedom...