A 41-year-old man was arrested Saturday evening for allegedly raping a 6-year-old girl in Kompong Thom province’s Prasat Balang district, a provincial police department official said Monday.
Sok Touch, a farmer in the district’s Baray village, confessed he raped the girl because he felt angry, particularly after the girl repeatedly spat on his head while she was visiting his house to play with his four children, said Reach Sophal, chief of the police department’s anti-human trafficking and juvenile protection office.
“The criminal raped the girl because he felt angry, not because he felt like having sex,” Reach Sophal said. He said the suspect, a relative of the victim, lives next door to her family. The girl was raped in the presence of the suspects’ children, he said.
The girl’s mother complained to police after she was told of the incident by some of the other children who had been at the suspect’s house at the time, Reach Sophal said.
Sok Touch was brought to provincial court on Monday morning, where he is being held on charges of rape and debauchery ahead of his trial, Reach Sophal said.
This is the third reported case of child rape in Kompong Thom in recent weeks. On Wednesday, a 19-year-old man was arrested in the province’s Stung Sen district after he was accused of raping an 8-year-old girl. Police on Sunday said the suspect, Srey Toy, was being held at Kompong Thom provincial court awaiting trial.
On the evening of Feb 29, a 10-year-old girl was raped by an unknown attacker, also in Stung Sen district, Reach Sophal said. The girl was raped after she went to urinate in a dark corner of a pagoda compound in Sra Yav commune’s Pok Yok village, he said. She was unable to identify the assailant.
Reach Sophal said police are investigating the incident.
