Tonight, I spent the most interesting TV evening since long ago: Natascha Kampusch, the 18-years-old Austrian who had been kidnapped in 1998 and was kept in a windowless basement room for eight years until she managed to flee two weeks ago, gave her first interview on Austrian public TV. After the interview, there was a round table with several members of her care team. (Here’s what Wikipedia says about N.K. in English, German, Danish (for Caroline), Dutch (for Lok), Czech (for Mr. Kupka), and Indonesian. But note that Natascha said that much of the information published about her is inaccurate or false.)
Here are some scattered highlights and reflections, as always with a strong legal bias: ;)
Ambivalence
Everything in this case is ambivalent in a myriad of dimensions, and nobody can probably grasp the complete picture of the case. (Reminds me somehow of constitutional law.)
The experts at the round table
There were, from Natascha’s care team, two psychiatrists (one of them could be the doppelgänger of Dieter Meier), her lawyer, and a social worker who acts as her personal confidant. Needless to say that they all had a huge responsibility and a difficult job to keep confidential information secret and at the same time fulfill her wish to share the information she wanted them to share. For instance, they made some–but rather general–remarks about her ‘weak’ side she didn’t disclose at the interview, where she gave an extremely self-aware, rather composed and surprisingly self-confident impression. I’m sure that she wanted them to say more about her than she said herself. If I were a criminal judge, I’d have great horror of a case like this, in which I’d have to judge whether there has been a breach of confidence or not. (In continental Europe, breach of confidence is almost exclusively a matter of criminal law.)
Ambivalence in the feelings vis-à-vis the offender
Natascha herself and also her therapists often emphasized her very complex and highly ambivalent relationship with the kidnapper. Although she categorically refuses to talk about sexual abuse in public, one person mentioned that there is a general legal problem in this context: In many cases of incestuous child abuse, the testimony of the victim is held to be untrustworthy because the victim is in some respects fond of his or her father.
Some less-than-obvious things she needs to learn
Natascha was more eloquent in the interview than most teenagers of her age, but she spoke a formal, ‘written’ and slightly outdated German. Part of the reason is that her grand-aunt had frequently taught her how to express herself when she was a child. One of the psychiatrists also mentioned that for most of the time during these eight years, she only had written material (newspapers, books, magazines) available and occasionally listened to public radio. He also pointed out that she should–and certainly will–learn how to speak in ‘normal’ colloquial German–or Austrian.
One other thing she needs to learn–according to her carers–is how to shop, e.g. to choose candy from a gigantic selection at a candy shop, or how to talk to shop assistants.
Last but not least: the media
The experts acknowledged that Natascha has a very mature attitude towards the media, and that she recognizes their value, despite the efforts to protect her against invasions of her privacy by paparazzi or undercover reporters. What seems to be most important to her is control over her appearances in the media, i.e. the exercise of her informational autonomy. From this perspective, it is no surprise that she was very upset that the police released photographs of the room where she had been kept: She said that it was her room, and that nobody has a better right to see it than she has to see anybody else’s bedroom. Also, she only used the term ‘dungeon’ reluctantly in the interview, saying that this had been a suggestion by her therapist. The latter also said that the publication of the photographs could compromise the therapy she currently undergoes.
I don’t know what Austrian media law has to say about this, but in Switzerland, a court almost certainly would balance the interests of the affected person with the interest of the public. What’s troublesome here is that the best argument of Natascha’s lawyer would be the negative effect of the publication on the therapy; and for sure, the court would attach great importance to the huge interest (it probably wouldn’t call it curiosity) of the public in the case. In contrast, the fact that Natascha didn’t want the pictures to be published would have less weight, and I don’t think a Swiss court would hold that her privacy was invaded by the publication if there weren’t a therapeutic reason not to release the information. But why on earth should the testimony of a psychiatrist have more weight than the will of the concerned person herself?
My intermediate (and admittedly very vague) conclusion
Emotions are the dark matter in the rational universe of law, something we can only detect indirectly with legal reasoning, but which shapes the legal system to a large extent.
