A teenager was charged and sent to the Battambang provincial prison on Saturday for allegedly raping his 5-year-old neighbor last month, police said on Sunday.
“We sent him to the court yesterday and the court decided to send him to the prison for pretrial detention. He was charged with raping a minor,” said Chet Vanny, deputy provincial police chief.
The teenager allegedly raped the child on November 14 in an orange grove about 200 meters from her home in Sangke district’s Anlong Vil commune, but she did not tell her mother until Friday, according to commune police chief Chea Vandy.
He said the victim’s mother had been bathing the girl when she told her that she was in pain.
“The mother then asked the girl ‘Why are you hurt?’ and the girl told her that the boy had raped her,” Mr. Vandy said, adding that a medical examination of the girl had proven that she was raped.
Mr. Vandy said the teenage boy took the girl on his bicycle to an orange plantation in the village, where he asked her to lie down in the grass and proceeded to rape her.
“After the victim’s mother filed a complaint with us, we went to arrest the boy at his home where we found him behaving normally,” he said. “Then we questioned him while his family was present at our office and he confessed to raping the girl.”
Last week, two boys—aged 11 and 13—admitted to attempting to rape their 6-year-old neighbor on November 28. Because of their age, however, they were sent to the provincial social affairs center in Battambang City to be educated, according to police and a rights worker, who said that a medical examination showed signs of sexual assault, but not rape.
The pair was due to be sent back to their respective families by today after an orphanage refused to take them into its care for fear that they would be a bad influence on the other children, according to officials.
