'Eight years in a concrete hell' - kidnap victim

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Austrian kidnap victim Natascha Kampusch, who was snatched from a street and held captive in a cellar for eight years, has revealed details of her horrific ordeal including being manacled to her captor at night and forced to call him "My Lord".

Miss Kampusch is set to release an autobiography, titled 3096 Days, on her time in captivity after Wolfgang Priklopil grabbed the then 10-year-old girl in March 2008 and locked her in a "hermetically sealed" concrete dungeon under his house.

In the book, which was serialised in London's Daily Mail newspaper, Miss Kampusch said she had been beaten up to 200 times a week and had tried to commit suicide on numerous occasions to escape the years of physical and mental abuse.

"I can hardly put into words what I felt when I saw that door. I'd been encased in concrete. Hermetically sealed," Miss Kampusch said.

After bundling her into the van, Priklopil said he was planning to hand her over to "others" but after a phone call he instead wrapped her in a blanket and carried her into a house.

Used as a slave to clean Priklopil's house, forced to shave off her hair and work semi-naked, Miss Kampusch eventually seized the opportunity to escape in 2006 while cleaning his car.

Priklopil, 44, committed suicide after her escape.

Apart from forcing her to choose a new name, Priklopil subjected her to mental abuse, repeating the world "obey" into an intercom speaker, forcing her to call him "Maestro" or "My Lord" and kneel in front of him, and cleaning his house obsessively.

He told her that a ransom demand was refused by her parents and that they were happy to be rid of her.

For her first six months in Priklopil's home Miss Kampusch was kept in a room without windows and only a pallet bed, toilet and sink. It was enclosed by a door made of reinforced concrete.

"The kidnapper started speaking in a voice that people usually reserve for pets; gentle and placating," she said.

"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."

Now 22, Miss Kampusch said she asked Priklopil for a "goodnight story" on her first night in captivity.

"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," she said.

"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."

Instead of fighting her kidnapper, she accepted the ordeal, and said she realised he was mentally ill when he snatched her schoolbag away saying it could have had a tracking device.

"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," she said.

In the first weeks of her incarceration Priklopil washed her nightly in a sink after they'd eaten dinner together, but as time passed he forced her to ask permission to stand, sit and even to turn her head.

He used an intercom in the bathroom to watch her take baths and accompanied her to the toilet.

"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," she said.

"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."

After her escape Ms Kampusch tried to launch a television chat show and is now living in Vienna, where she bought Priklopil's house and his car.

- WA Today