Natascha Kampusch, the 18-year-old Austrian teenager incarcerated for eight years in a house near Vienna after being kidnapped,  said on Monday she did not feel deprived as a result of her captivity. It had, she said, enabled her to avoid drinking, smoking and making "bad friends."

In her first public statement since she escaped last Wednesday, Natascha said she mourned the death of her captor Wolfgang Priklopil, who threw himself in front of a train after he discovered she had fled his house near Vienna.

"He was part of my life. That's why I mourn him in a certain way," said Natascha in a statement read out by her psychiatrist Max Friedrich at a news conference. "It's true of course I had a different youth from other people but in principle I don't have the feeling that I missed anything. I avoided some things by not starting to smoke or drink and not having had bad friends."

Natascha, who was 10 when telecommunications technician Priklopil kidnapped her in March 1998, also appealed to the media to leave her alone and asked for time to get to grips with her ordeal. She has been shielded from the public while she is being interviewed by police and counsellors, and has even refused to see her parents. She met them only briefly after escaping from Priklopil.

Natascha denied initial reports that he had made her call him "master." "I never called him master, although he wanted me to," said Natascha. "He was not my master," she said. "I was equally strong but -- symbolically speaking -- he held me aloft in his hands while kicking me with his feet. But he had taken on the wrong person, and both he and I knew it."

Austrian police had said on Saturday that she had told investigators she had had "sexual contact" with her kidnapper.

Priklopil had prepared the kidnapping well in advance, furnishing a 5 square meter (54 sq. ft.) basement cell and installing water pipes and air ventilation behind a 150 kilogram steel door of his house in Strasshof, 25 kilometers northeast of Vienna.

But she has declined to refer to it as a "cell" and instead calls it her room. "My room was adequately furnished. It was my room," said Natascha.

She said she was allowed to leave the room, scotching media reports that she had been locked in it for most of her captivity. She said she had a regular everyday life. "We would have breakfast together -- he usually didn't work -- then housework, reading, television, talking, cooking. That was it, for years. All combined with the fear of being lonely."

Natascha said she had managed to escape while vacuuming his car in the garden. "He walked away because of the noise of the vacuum cleaner. That was my opportunity, I just let the cleaner run."

She said she could understand the public interest in her story but asked media to leave her alone. Foreign newspapers are reported to have offered up to €50,000 for rights to it. "I can well imagine how shocking and frightening the thought is that something like this is even possible," she said.

"I am also aware that you have a certain curiosity in me and of course want to know further details about my circumstances," the statement said. "But I want to assure you in advance that I don't want to and won't answer any questions regarding intimate or personal details.... Perhaps I'll tell a psychiatrist about it one day or someone else if I need to, or perhaps I'll never tell anyone. The intimacy belongs to me alone."