Battambang provincial court on Wednesday sentenced a 40-year-old man to 18 years and six months in prison for the repeated rape of his two teenage daughters. The abuse started when the girls were 10 and 12 years old. They are now 16 and 18 years old.
Police arrested the man on June 17 after his wife appealed to the court for intervention, Battambang court chief Nol Noun said Thursday.
“He had been having sex with his daughters for a long time. Neither daughter dared to report it to her mother, because they were afraid their father would kill them,” Nol Noun said.
“The offender always threatened after having sex with his daughters, but the youngest daughter could not be patient with her father having sex with her any longer. Then she reported it to her mother.”
The family, who are very poor, live in remote Samraong village, Ta Moeun commune, Thmar Kol district, according to the court chief.
He went on to say that the father confessed to having had sex with his daughters a dozen times, 10 with the oldest and twice with the youngest.
“Sometimes he had sex in the rice fields and sometimes inside the house when his wife left early in the morning to sell her vegetables at the market,” Nol Noun said.
Sim Souyong, director of NGO Protection of Juvenile Justice, said Thursday the father had been raping his oldest daughter since she was 12 and the youngest since she was 10.
“I can’t report it to the neighbors because he threatened me. And I think that everyone of those children in the village, their father must also rape his children like my father. So I kept it secret until I couldn’t anymore,” the youngest daughter told the court, according to a transcript read by Sim Souyong.
He also said the daughter was elated by the verdict. “I wanted my father sentenced to life in prison, because I hate his face,” he reported her saying.
