A former GW student’s parents allegedly bound and kidnapped her in Maine last week and planned to force her have an abortion, a police officer said.
Katelyn Kampf left Boston College last year after her parents, Nicholas and Lola Kampf, became aware of her relationship with a man now in jail, the Boston Globe reported this week. Her parents forcibly enrolled their daughter at GW as a student this past summer, Lt. Fred Rheault of the Salem (N.H.) Police Department told The Hatchet.
The Kampf parents allegedly tied up and gagged Katelyn Kampf Friday morning, abducting her from their home in North Yarmouth, Maine, Rheault said. Nicholas Kampf stopped at a K-Mart in Salem to make a phone call after his daughter had hidden his cell phone.
Rheault said Katelyn Kampf “preyed on her mother’s sympathy” and asked to be allowed to go to the bathroom. Once separated from her parents in the K-Mart, she escaped to the Staples next door to call “911.”
When the police arrived, they found the parents looking for their daughter in the parking lot. They found a .22 caliber rifle, rope and duct tape inside the family Lexus. Rheault added that there were two or three bags and “clothes thrown around the car like they jammed it quickly and were on the road.”
The Boston Globe reported that local police said the parents “admitted to the plot,” but Rheault said in an interview Wednesday night that the two didn’t admit guilt. He said the couple was charged with kidnapping Friday, as well as possession of marijuana.
“They made some statements; I wouldn’t go so far as to say they confessed,” Rheault said.
Katelyn Kampf told a local sheriff she thought the kidnapping was sparked by her parents’ unrest with her interracial relationship, according to the Globe. The paper reported that the parents allegedly were trying to bring their daughter to New York or Massachusetts to force her to have an abortion.
“She clearly is still traumatized by the event,” said Mark Dion, sheriff of Cumberland County, Maine, where the alleged abduction occurred. “It is difficult for her to appreciate that her parents did what they did, although it’s not a surprise to her, based on other events that have occurred in the household.”
In Monday’s arraignment, the judge released the Kampf parents from jail on $100,000 bail, Rheault said. The judge ordered the couple to stay away from their daughter and her boyfriend’s family. The next court proceeding is Sept. 26.
GW spokesperson Adela de la Torre said Kampf was enrolled as a non-degree student during the summer session, but said she was not sure if the 19-year-old student took classes.
Kampf’s parents said they bought her an apartment in D.C. this summer and enrolled her at GW, Rheault said.
“They’re not sure if she ever attended or if she just went down; they dropped her off for school, and then she left after they left,” Rheault said. “There was a period of no contact . (and) they went down to check on her well-being.”
Rheault said the parents determined that their daughter had not been in the Washington apartment, which is what led them back to Maine to look for her.
