Today she is at a "secure and undisclosed" location, in the company of police and social workers. Tellingly, the girl whose eight-year existence as the captive of an obsessed paedophile is almost beyond imagining, has not asked for any contact with her parents. Nor, perhaps mercifully, will she be questioned further about her ordeal until tomorrow at the earliest.

"She urgently needs a break, " said Erich Zewttler of Austria's Federal Criminal Investigations Office. "She needs her rest."

He confirmed reports that Natascha had been sexually assaulted by her captor, but said DNA tests on him, taken after he committed suicide, reveal that he was not wanted for any other crime.

The story that has shocked the world came to light early on Wednesday evening in Strasshof, northeast of Vienna. The market community is a sedate place, where the houses are neat and the hedges manicured.

There, in the Heine Strasse, a 71year-old woman, known only as Inge T, was pottering around having a quiet night at home. Suddenly, a pale, sparsely-clothed young woman appeared in her garden and started beating on the window in wild panic.

She said: "I am Natascha Kampusch."

Inge let her in and phoned the police.

"The girl sent me immediately back into the house, " said Inge T.

"She was afraid that the man would kill me if he saw me."

The man, of course, was Natascha's captor, Wolfgang Priklopil. The 44year-old news technician was an obsessive type, neighbours said, a perfectionist and loner who was constantly renovating his house. He shot pigeons for fun, feared dogs and would only mow his lawn at midday.

'You wouldn't have got away from me' It was Priklopil who sat in a white Mercedes van with blacked-out windows on Vienna's Rennbahnweg in March 1998. Natascha has said she saw the man as she walked to school that morning in her little red coat and, sensing something was wrong, tried to cross the street. But Priklopil was faster. He hit out at her, telling Natascha: "This way or that way, you wouldn't have got away from me. I would have got you another day."

So began the next eight years of Natascha Kampusch's life. At number 60 Heine Strasse, Priklopil's beige two-storey home, Natascha was taken to her prison. It was underneath the garage, the entrance disguised as a workshop pit. Down some steep stairs was a 69 centimetre-tall steel door hidden behind a chest of drawers.

Behind that was Natascha's new home, a 1.6 metre-high pen, which police say was built long before her abduction. It was windowless, though ventilated, had a bunk bed, some shelves and a writing desk. There was a toilet and a sink.

While she was trapped here, a massive hunt for her was under way.

'Missing' posters were taped to trees, helicopters with heat-seeking equipment were scrambled and police search dogs scoured every inch of the Austrian capital. Lakes were dredged and Natascha's parents made tearful pleas for their little girl to come home.

Investigators even went to Hungary, where Natascha had holidayed with her father the week before. But they found no trace. Priklopil was interviewed, but he had an alibi. His home was never searched.

Psychologists have called Priklopil a "highly sadistic perpetrator who did all he could to have a slave", but seemingly he did not display the same extreme brutality as Belgium serialkiller and rapist Marc Dutroux.

Natascha was allowed to watch television and listen to the radio. Priklopil brought her books and newspapers and, according to some reports, even taught her. She was aware of world events, police said. She even spoke about the 2004 tsunami.

"She said they would get up early and have breakfast together, " said Sabine Freudenberger, 23, the policewoman who first had contact with Natascha. "They spent the whole day together. She helped with the housework, tended the garden, everything."

But at night Natascha always returned to her dungeon.

Although she has described him as a "criminal" Natascha has claimed "Wolfgang was always kind to me."

Police believe she was sexually abused, but Natascha has so far said everything she did during her incarceration was of her own free will.

Psychologists are divided over claims that she developed a severe form of 'Stockholm Syndrome' during her years with Wolfgang Priklopil. The condition, whereby captives begin to identify with their captors, is a defence mechanism to cope with the situation and avoid harm and could explain why Natascha went along with her captor's wishes for so long.

Others maintain her willingness to acquiesce was more to do with her age.

"Children have a natural protection mechanism against bad experiences, " said criminal psychologist Christian Ludke. "They begin to live in their minds in an alternative fantasy world and this saves them. It is like being under general anaesthetic."

High intelligence and 'iron will' This, her high level of intelligence and "iron will", it is thought, is why it was only eight years on that Natascha took her chance to escape. "She must have come to terms with her situation very well, " says criminal psychiatrist, Sigrun Rossmanith. "Otherwise she wouldn't have survived." She always had a calendar and kept a diary which now runs to hundreds of pages.

As Natascha vacuumed Priklopil's car on Wednesday, his mobile phone rang. The sound of the Hoover was too loud for him to have a conversation so he stepped aside. That was the moment, she told police. "I took my chance and ran."

Investigators who initially questioned Priklopil about Natascha's disappearance say he had become more careless in recent months, losing interest in his child prisoner as she became an adult. He started taking her to the bakers and, according to some reports, even allowed her to go into the village alone. No longer a child, Natascha did not fulfil Priklopil's fantasies of having a "little princess" over whom he held complete control. This, experts say, Natascha must have realised now put her life in danger and prompted her escape.

We will probably never know exactly what motivated Wolfgang Priklopil to abduct and keep Natascha Kampusch. For Priklopil is dead. On Wednesday evening, realising Natascha had escaped, he drove in his red BMW into Vienna, lay down across railway tracks and waited to die. His suicide came as no surprise to Natascha. Over the years she spent with him they would often talk about his crime, she told police. He would tell her: "they will never get me alive."

This weekend, investigators are looking into whether Priklopil had co-conspirators and psychiatrists are assessing how deep a scar the trauma has left. Natascha is reportedly in good health. "She told me she wanted chocolate and Coca-Cola, " said Sabine Freudenberger. "She said how much she missed it all these years. She was so happy that it was all over and that she could finally talk to someone."

Freudenberger gave the girl her watch. Natascha had never had one, she told the young policewoman, but had always dreamt of owning one.

For the girl who had already lost so much time, it was Natasha's first step back into normality.