Five Arrested in Gang Rape of Suspect’s Girlfriend

Five suspects in the gang rape of a 22-year-old woman—including the victim’s boyfriend—were arrested in Kandal province on Monday night while attempting to board a river ferry with the unconscious victim, police said on Tuesday.

Rat Rotha, 20, planned the attack with the help of four friends after learning that his girlfriend was cheating on him, according to Seng Socheat, chief of police in Kandal’s Sa’ang district, where the crime allegedly took place.

“The victim’s boyfriend knew that the victim had sex with many men and was angry with the victim. So he arranged the rape with his friends,” he said, identifying the four friends as Sopheap Chhlonh, 18, and three teenage boys aged 16 and 17.

At about 8 p.m. on Monday, Mr. Rotha telephoned his girlfriend and told her to take a ferry across the Bassac River to have sex with him, Mr. Socheat said.

When she arrived, he and a 17-year-old suspect walked with her to a mango farm near a local high school, where Mr. Rotha had sex with her, he said.

“After they had sex, he let his other friends gang-rape her.”

The police chief said the suspects took turns raping the woman until she lost consciousness, then returned to the ferry landing with the victim shortly after 9 p.m., planning to drop her body near her home on the other side of the river.

But when a group of local police officers prepared to board the ferry alongside the men, they noticed the unconscious woman wedged between two suspects on a motorbike.

Confronted by the officers, Mr. Rotha and two other suspects admitted to raping the woman, and all five were subsequently arrested, Mr. Socheat said.

Under questioning at the district police station on Tuesday, all five confessed, he said, adding that they would be sent to the Kandal Provincial Court today.

The victim, he said, was taken to a private clinic on Monday night and returned home on Tuesday.

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