Three men who confessed to drugging and gang-raping a 21-year-old casino worker in Poipet City in the early hours of Friday were charged by the Banteay Meanchey Provincial Court on Sunday and sent to prison to await trial, officials said.
The three suspects, all unemployed drug addicts, were arrested by military police on Friday morning just hours after they took turns raping the woman in the border town’s derelict railway station, according to Prum Theng, director of the provincial military police’s judicial investigations department.
Mr. Theng said the victim was employed at the Holiday Palace casino in Poipet commune, and was walking home alone after her shift ended at about 3 a.m. when the men approached her on foot and forced her into the railway station, threatening to kill her if she screamed.
What happened next, he said, “was so cruel.”
“They forced the victim to use drugs [crystal methamphetamine] until she became intoxicated and raped her,” he said. “The suspects raped her one by one, then tore off her clothes so she could not run away.”
Locals who work near the railway station found the naked woman at about 6 a.m. and brought her a set of clothes before informing military police, who made short work of locating her attackers, according to Mr. Theng.
With a description of the men from the victim, he said, they tracked them down to a rented house in the area. Under questioning at the provincial military police headquarters, they all confessed to raping the woman, he added.
Mr. Theng said the men were questioned at the Banteay Meanchey court Sunday morning before being charged with aggravated rape and forcing someone to use an addictive substance, under the criminal code and the drug law, respectively.
Hin Sophal, director of the provincial prison, confirmed that the men were received Sunday morning. “They arrived at about 10:30 a.m and are now being kept in pretrial detention,” he said.
