A 13-year-old boy and and his 11-year-old friend were remanded to a social affairs center in Battambang City on Tuesday after confessing to sexually assaulting their 6-year-old neighbor on Saturday, according to police and a local rights worker.
Man Sima, a provincial monitor for rights group Adhoc, said the pair had been playing with four other neighborhood boys and two sisters, aged 6 and 10, behind the girls’ house in O’Mal commune on Saturday afternoon—as they had done many times in the past.
Ms. Sima said that at about 2 p.m., all six boys ran into a large, hollowed-out mound of straw and called for the girls to join them.
“When the female victims went inside the shelter made of straw, the suspects told them to remove their clothes and lie on the straw inside the shelter,” she said.
When the girls refused, four of the boys pinned them to the ground as the 13-year-old and 11-year-old tore off their clothes and attempted to rape them, she added.
While the older sister managed to wrest herself free and run away, she said, the younger girl did not, and was raped by the two boys.
Ms. Sima said the girls’ parents reported the incident to local police on Sunday morning, and that the boys were arrested on Monday.
Deputy Battambang City police chief Seng Luch confirmed the arrests, but said the boys did not succeed in raping the 6-year-old. He said they confessed to trying to rape the girl to police on Monday and again under questioning at the Battambang Provincial Court on Tuesday morning.
“The suspects confessed to trying to having sex with the female victim behind her house,” Mr. Luch said.
Because both boys were underage, he added, they had been sent to the provincial social affairs department for rehabilitation and would be released back to their families.
Both Ms. Sima and Mr. Luch said the 6-year-old underwent a medical examination at the provincial referral hospital on Tuesday, but that the results have not yet been released.
