Eight Years Lost

A young Austrian woman says she escaped from a sealed garage where she was held for eight years. Police are virtually certain that she is actually Natascha Kampusch, who was kidnapped at age ten. No trace of the girl was ever found despite a massive search effort.

Police said relatives identified the woman as Natascha Kampusch, who vanished in 1998 at age 10 while walking to school, and a major manhunt was under way for a man in his mid-40s suspected of having abducted her.

Herwig Haidinger, head of the Federal Crime Office (BKA), said the woman was undergoing DNA tests to confirm her identity but that investigators were virtually certain she was Kampusch.

Austrian news agency APA quoted them as saying there were no indications the woman might have suffered sexual abuse.

The woman, very pale but in apparently good physical health, told police she had escaped earlier in the day from a house in a village near Vienna where she had been largely confined in an secured garage since her abduction.

But she said her captor allowed her occasional walks with him in the neighbourhood and access to radio, television, newspapers and books, and the garage was equipped with a bed and wardrobe, according to police and local media.

BKA investigator Erich Zwettler, asked why the woman had not fled while on any of her outings, said she seemed to have had "Stockholm Syndrome", a psychological condition in which long-held captives begin to identify with their captors.

"She is white-pale, looking as if she had been out of the light of day for a long time, but she articulated well and could read and write," APA quoted a police investigator as saying.

Police are searching for a 44 year old suspect believed to have fled when the woman escaped. Thankfully she is alive, but think of what this woman has lost. Her childhood and all the experiences of growing up were stolen from her. There are some crimes that deserve harsh punishment. This is one.