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This headline is absolutely grotesque and inexcusable: Victim ‘had sex with captor willingly’

While the contents of the article are a little more divulging with the details than the headline, it’s obvious that the headline was created purely to attract attention and raise a shock factor. Which, congratulations, it has. However, I don’t think it’s the kind of attention any paper wants: degrading a victim’s suffering and her exploiting her experiences while being held captive to get more attention. That’s not ok.

The back story includes many more details than the New Zealand paper. Natascha was kidnapped when she was 10, and escaped when she was 18. During that time, she held captive in a small basement cell with no windows and a locked door, with books to keep her company (after the first two years anyways). She was also beaten and coerced into taking sexually explicit photographs and having sex with her captor. While the dynamics of a situation such as this are never simple, it more complicated than a victim having sex with their captor “willingly”. Putting the word willingly in air quotes doesn’t make it ok, and it’s not enough to explain the multi-layered situation that exists here.

From The New Zealand Herald:

Austrian police are at the centre of a storm after interrogation reports were leaked showing that the kidnap victim Natascha Kampusch admitted she “willingly” had sex with her captor, Wolfgang Priklopil.

She also indicated that Priklopil - who killed himself in the hours following her escape - had accomplices; something she later denied. And the papers also reveal she was examined by a gynaecologist and left a suspicion that she may have become pregnant by Priklopil while in captivity, prompting speculation in Austrian and German media that she had a baby while being held. […]

The newspaper Heute received witness statements testifying about Priklopil’s love of S and M and how he routinely hurt females dressed as schoolgirls. Photographs of Kampusch being used as a sex slave by her kidnapper were hidden by police.

In the leaked documents, Sabine Freudenberger, the first person to interview Kampusch at the police station, said: “I only really asked her three questions - whether she had had sex with her kidnapper, how it is that after all this time she seemed to be so educated and whether there were accomplices.

“She admitted that she had had sex with him and that she had done that voluntarily. She had been given books by him to read, could listen to the radio and was given videos to see. When asked if there were any accomplices she said: `I do not know any names.”‘

Of course the photos of Natascha being used as a sex slave were hidden by the police, they had every right to hide those photos. She was a victim.

I think that interviewer needs some sensitivity training if you ask me. My three questions would not be if she had sex with him and how is it that she became so educated! Those questions were asked at the curiosity of the office, not out of necessity for the investigation. While it may have been relevant to ask is she was raped or had been subject to any type of sexual assault, asking a victim if their captor had sex with them is an entirely different question: it implies that the victim had a choice in the matter and that there was some enjoyment to be gained from the experience.

Disgusting!

Via The Curvature.