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The Austrian girl who was held captive for eight years in a basement refuses to see her mother, as police worked on Saturday to give Natascha Kampusch, 18, time to adjust to the outside world.
"She wants to be shielded," the mother, Brigitta Sirny, told Saturday's edition of Die Presse newspaper, adding that her daughter has not wanted to see her since they were first reunited.
"It is better for her... We didn't really know what to do so we put her in professional hands," Sirny said.
Kampusch, who disappeared in 1998 when 10 years old, was found wandering in the town of Strasshof, 25 kilometres (15 miles) northeast of Vienna, on Wednesday after escaping from a basement cell in a suburban home belonging to telecommunications technician Wolfgang Priklopil.
Police, who say she is being kept in "a safe place", have refused to give Kampusch dolls she had as a child and will not allow her new stepmother, the wife of her re-married father and whom she has never met, to visit, Kurier newspaper reported.
On Friday, Interior Minister Liese Prokop said Kampusch, who bears her mother's maiden name, would be given a break from interrogation "until at least Monday." Die Presse cited police sources saying the young woman "is now clamming up. It is becoming hard to question her."
Apart from a few people close to the case, nobody, not even Sirny, knows where Kampusch is being kept. She is surrounded by psychologists and a specially trained police officer and all meetings with family and police are held at a police station.
"She is 18 years old and therefore has the right to decide whether and with whom she wants to talk about her experiences," Gerhard Lang of the Austrian criminal police told Die Presse.
"She explicitly asked us not under any circumstances to give specific information to third parties," he said, adding that Kampusch was following how her case was being reported on television and in the papers.
"Natascha lived in her own world. (Now) she must learn to deal with our world, she must build new relationships, with her family too,"
juvenile attorney Monika Pinterits, who has spoken with Kampusch, told Kurier.
The teenager apparently weighs just over 40 kilograms (about 90
pounds) at 1.60 metres (about 5 foot 3 inches).
"She ate practically only cold things, like bread and sausage and hardly any fruit or vegetables," Sirny said in a Kurier report.
The paper said that Kampusch seemed to like sweets and a large box of Jaffa Cake-like orange biscuits can be seen on photos of her tiny cell.
Also on the photos of the five-square-metre room in which Kampusch spent over 100 months, is the blue-checkered dress she was wearing on the day of her kidnapping, hanging on a clotheshanger, according to her mother.
"She seems to have wanted to always have it before her, her only link to her former life," Sirny said after viewing a video of the cell.
With clothes strewn over the bed, handbags lying around, books and magazines piled high on the desk and mementoes stuck to a pin board on the wall, what was Kampusch's prison for 3079 days looks like a typical teenager's room, according to photos.
Wolfgang Priklopil, the man who allegedly held the young woman for over eight years, seems to have planned the kidnapping months in advance, furnishing the place and installing running water and a ventilation system behind the 150-kilogram vault door.
Electricity for the light, radio and TV were also controlled externally with a timer, according to Kurier.
The paper reported that Kampusch cried a lot when she found out Priklopil had killed himself, which could indicate she is suffering from "Stockholm Syndrome," a condition in which captives develop a positive relationship with their captors over time.
Press reports said Kampusch may have had sexual relations with Priklopil and that they were "voluntary," following similar claims by a police woman who spoke to the young woman, but police investigators will not confirm it.
Kampusch is also reported to have made diary entries during her time in captivity.
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Austria-crime-kidnap
AFP 261124 GMT 08 06
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