At the age of 10, on 2 March 1998, she was abducted and held in a secret cellar by her kidnapper Wolfgang Přiklopil for more than eight years, until she escaped on 23 August 2006.

[3] Ludwig Adamovich, head of a special commission looking into possible police failures in the investigation of the kidnapping, claimed that the time Kampusch was imprisoned "was always better than what she had known until then".

[4] This assessment was denied by Brigitta Sirny, and Adamovich's statement was in a news report by a criminal court;[5] his conviction was later overturned on appeal.

[7] The 10-year-old Kampusch left her family's residence in Vienna's Donaustadt district on the morning of 2 March 1998, but failed to arrive at school or come home.

[10] A massive police effort followed in which 776 minivans were examined,[11][12] including that of her kidnapper Přiklopil, who lived about half an hour from Vienna by car in the Lower Austrian town of Strasshof an der Nordbahn near Gänserndorf.

[13] Speculations arose of child pornography rings or organ theft,[14] leading officials to also investigate possible links to the crimes of French serial killer Michel Fourniret.

[15] Kampusch had carried her passport with her when she left, as she had been on a family trip to Hungary a few days before, so the police extended the search abroad.

Afterward, she spent increasing amounts of time upstairs in the rest of the house, but each night was sent back to the chamber to sleep, as well as while Přiklopil was at work.

In later years, she was seen outside in the garden alone,[18] and Přiklopil's business partner had said that Kampusch seemed relaxed and happy when he called at his home to borrow a trailer.

She initially denied that they had made the trip, but eventually admitted that it was true, although she said that no opportunities to escape had arisen during that time.

She did not feel that she had missed out on anything during her imprisonment, but she noted, "I spared myself many things, I did not start smoking or drinking and I did not hang out in bad company", but she also said, "It was a place to despair".

At 12:53 pm, she was cleaning and vacuuming her kidnapper's white van[31] in the garden when Přiklopil got a call on his mobile phone.

She ran for some 200 meters (218 yards) through neighbouring gardens and a street, jumping fences, and asking bystanders to call the police, but they paid her no attention.

She suggests that people who use this term about her are disrespectful of her and do not allow her the right to describe and analyze the complex relationship that she had with her kidnapper in her own words.

Both press interviews were given in return for a package including housing support, a long-term job offer, and help with her education.

[54] On 16 June 2008, the newspaper The Times published an in-depth interview with Kampusch by Bojan Pancevski and Stefanie Marsh.

[56][57] The book Girl in the Cellar: The Natascha Kampusch Story[58] by Allan Hall and Michael Leidig appeared in November 2006, written in English.

[59] Together with two journalists, Kampusch's mother Brigitta Sirny wrote a book about the ordeal, Verzweifelte Jahre ("Desperate Years").

On 15 April 2012, German newspaper Welt am Sonntag reported that the film would feature Antonia Campbell-Hughes as Kampusch and Thure Lindhardt as Přiklopil.

[35] During the Cold War period, Oskar and his son Karl built a bomb shelter, thought to be the origin of Kampusch's cellar prison.

It was reported that she claimed the house from Přiklopil's estate because she wanted to protect it from vandals and being torn down; she also noted that she has visited it since her escape.

[74] In January 2010, Kampusch said she had retained the house because it was such a big part of her formative years, also stating that she would fill in the cellar if it is ever sold, adamant that it will never become a macabre museum to her lost adolescence.