Here is a fascinating portrait of a self-possessed young woman who won't let another person's evil behavior destroy her.
The 1998 kidnapping of 10-year-old Natascha Kampusch taught her that "no one is infallible," she says in this short documentary. "Any one of us can find themselves in a position where they lose control of their lives."
Her kidnapper -- she never speaks his name -- kept her locked in a steel- and concrete-reinforced secret dungeon on the outskirts of Vienna, but Natascha always maintained control of her thoughts, coping with her ordeal through routines from home (i.e., dusting and tidying up, using skin cream to polish wood).
It must have been scary indeed for Natascha to consider the hour-long process of reaching her dank, moldy lair (i.e., moving a heavy safe, crawling in backwards). She'd be buried alive and mummified if something happened to her captor and he didn't return.
Natascha's kidnapper sounds to have been a socially isolated, outwardly compliant person with a compulsive need for control. He'd time the lights as if Natascha was in a real jail, begrudge her tears and fingerprints, and cruelly limit her food, arguing she didn't need much to eat, given her five-by-five-meter confines.
He eventually allowed Natascha into the rest of the house, and, briefly, outdoors to a garden, where she savored the grass and breeze, beseeching a hedge branch as a memento of the natural world.
Natascha's captor was not without a conscience, she says. He'd let her read books, apparently left over from his school days, and, when requested, bring her the non-fiction and philosophy she preferred. He was good at math, so she'd ask him to give and grade tests, which he tackled with a vengeance, crossing everything out in red.
Natascha guessed that her captor, due to what he'd experienced in childhood, felt a need to be in charge -- that since he hadn't been able to gain a sense of control in his life, one day he simply went out and grabbed it.
"He just liked having someone to dominate, to boost his own self-esteem," she says.
Meanwhile, her mother (we never hear a word about her dad), lacking proof of her daughter's demise, tells us, "Natascha was never dead for me." She would look at photos and say, "Don't give up -- you're a strong, strong child!"
Natascha recounts the day of her abduction. She'd seen a man up ahead of her on the sidewalk, and contemplated crossing the street, but decided against it -- an ineffably fateful move. Another young girl saw her being dragged into a white van, and the disappearance sparked wide publicity and a dragnet. (Amazingly, Natascha's kidnapper was interviewed but never arrested, and heads eventually rolled as a result.)
At times throughout her ordeal, Natascha apparently considered suicide, asking herself, "What's the point?" But she'd remember that she mustn't allow herself to be defeated. She survived by forgiving her captor, she said: Without that, "I'd be so full of hate...it would have destroyed me physically."
It was obvious that the perpetrator was weak and unstable, a victim of his problems, and Natascha actually felt pity and compassion for him, she said.
She had lived underground for so long -- 8.5 years -- that no one on the outside would eventually have recognized her. So her captor came to take her off of the property, introducing her to a friend as an "acquaintance," but warning her he'd kill her if she tried to escape.
However, when Natascha's golden opportunity arrived, and she made a run for it while the bad guy was on the phone, it was he who met up with death, seemingly committing suicide by train without hours.
Natascha seems to have dismissed the media's prurient interest in her case, deeming the press's behavior itself as abusive.
"People love horrible things, and can't get enough of them," she concludes.
Who'd dispute it?
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