Kratie provincial police arrested a teenager yesterday in the rape and murder of a 9-year-old girl.
Police found the girl’s naked and beaten body on Friday in the woods behind a Srei Treng village primary school in Sambor district.
District police chief Bun Chhoeun said authorities arrested the 16 year old on Tuesday afternoon at his Srei Treng village home, approximately 30 to 40 meters from the victim’s house.
“The suspect confessed that he killed and raped a 9-year-old girl because she cursed him and made him angry and he felt she looked down on him,” Mr Chhoeun said.
On Thursday “we will send the suspect involved in the rape and murder of the 9-year-old girl to court,” provincial police chief Chhuong Seak Hak said.
Mr Chhoeun said the suspect was playing volleyball with his friends on Thursday afternoon when the girl allegedly cursed him. Offended, the teenager hit her with the ball.
Deputy district penal police chief Svay Sunnary said the girl’s parents grew concerned when their daughter failed to return home and reported her absence to authorities by about 3 pm.
Some time that afternoon, said Chan Sok Kim, chief of provincial penal police, the teenager took the victim into woods behind the local primary school and raped her. Worried the girl would tell someone what happened, he added, the teenager admitted to beating her to death with a stick. The girl suffered a massive head wound and bruises across her body.
“The suspect confessed he intentionally killed this 9-year-old girl that looked down on him,” Mr Sok Kim said.
The penal police chief added that authorities took the suspect back to the scene of the crime after the arrest and had him reenact the attack, videotaping the exercise with the intent of later broadcasting it on television.
Though the first rape and murder of a Cambodian minor this year, the rape of children has become an all-too-common, yet little spoken about, event.
Like government authorities, local rights group Adhoc reported an increase in child rape cases during 2009. According to Adhoc officer Lim Mony, her group recorded 460 rape cases in total last year, 41 more than the year before. And though she had not broken the numbers down, she said the numbers included an increase in child rapes.
