Kidnap girl reveals new struggles

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Austrian kidnap escapee Natascha Kampusch has revealed more about her eight years in captivity and her struggle to cope afterwards.

She recounted how she tried to scream when she was abducted at the age of 10, "but nothing came out".

Since her escape last year, aged 18, she has been enjoying getting to know her family again, but said she was still treated "differently" by people.

She said kidnapper Wolfgang Priklopil had kept her on a very meagre diet.

"I was afraid I would starve to death", she told Austria's ORF television, in at least the third television interview since her escape.

Her weight has increased from the meagre 42kg (6st 8lb) she weighed on her escape. She had not put on weight at all during her captivity.

Threats to family

Her story has captivated Austria and the wider world since it emerged last year.

Wolfgang Priklopil threatened to hurt Natascha's family, she said

Ms Kampusch, abducted in March 1998, ran away on 23 August last year while Priklopil was distracted making a phone call.

The communications technician had held her in a small, windowless basement beneath his garage in the commuter town of Strasshof, 25km (15 miles) outside Vienna for eight and a half years.

He killed himself hours after her escape.

Back in 1998 she had seen him following her and had a gut feeling that something was wrong, she said, but did not cross the street because she was afraid of making a fool of herself and being run over.

In the first few days after her capture she found it impossible to sleep, she said.

"I couldn't see a thing. I could only listen," she said. "It was dark - so dark. I heard the rush of my own blood. I felt the tightness, the cold."

She said Priklopil had threatened to kill her family to keep her compliant.

She has never revealed whether her kidnapper forced her into any sort of relationship.

But she said: "On the one hand I was incredibly important for him, but on the other he treated me like I was less than nothing."