The music filtered in from a neighboring village’s party on the night Mon Chinda was raped and killed. As the sun set on Feb 21, the 10-year-old girl was seen twirling to a cha-cha song as dust floated around her feet.
In the morning, villagers thought she was a child’s toy floating in a pond about 1 km from her home in Anglong Kong Thmei village in Phnom Penh’s Dangkao district.
Perhaps a man in the village watched her dancing that night. Perhaps he thought of those steps when he raped her. Perhaps he thought of the lively beat, fading out as the feet stopped kicking when he squeezed the breath from her throat. Perhaps he thought of those feet as he tied them together and dropped her in the murky water.
And perhaps it was those purple feet pulled from the pond that caused a male suspect to flee the village.
Now, like many rape cases throughout Cambodia, Mon Chinda’s remains unsolved. The only suspect in her case is on the loose—perhaps in Phnom Penh, villagers said.
At least four brutal rape-killing cases in the last two months have caused many to ask why they happen and why they often go unsolved.
Ellen Minotti, director of the NGO Social Services of Cambodia, said she can’t remember as many rape cases when she arrived in Cambodia 12 years ago. But when asked why, she responded like many experts in the field: “I don’t know.”
Chanthol Oung, director of Cambodian Women’s Crisis Center, said she is seeing more reported cases at her organization, but she also does not know why.
“Maybe the women know better about their rights, maybe they know where to go or maybe there are more rape cases,” she said.
Strangling the Stories
At about 8 am on Feb 22, Anglong Kong Thmei villager Pong Say was clearing garbage from a pond so he could fish when his hand caught something that felt like floating debris.
Wading further, he realized it was not a branch, but a leg. Clearing the garbage from around the body, he called to another villager, who was hacking small trees for firewood nearby.
The villager said that it couldn’t be a child. The tiny body resembled a doll. Pulling the girl from the pond, they lay her on the ground. Her jaw was shattered, her ankles were tied together with rope.
“Has someone lost a daughter?” he asked other villagers.
By this time, more people, who were clearing trees nearby, gathered around the body. A neighbor, Nuon Mom, 35, finally recognized the girl she had seen dancing on the road the night before.
Someone ran to tell the girl’s mother, Chan Sokha. Chan Sokha had frantically searched the town the night before when her daughter didn’t come home from a nearby shop after it had closed.
“I never thought I would find my daughter in that place,” she said. “I thought she might be kidnapped and sold as a prostitute.”
Villagers reported the case to local police. Some villagers began saying an NGO might come to inspect their village, Nuom Mom said.
Shortly after, the man police eventually accused of the killing left town.
Lost Daughters
Several reports by human rights NGOs Licadho, Adhoc and the Cambodian Women’s Crisis Center all point to the lack of reporting, impunity for criminals and a weak social morality as aggravators in Cambodia’s rape-killing problem.
A gang rape study reported that one in three people interviewed, ages 13 to 28, knew someone involved in the practice of prolonged gang rapes—most often on prostitutes. Although the study, carried out by NGO Gender and Development, did not assess rape-killings, only about 13 percent of the 580 people surveyed responded that rape against a prostitute is wrong.
No national survey assesses the incidence of rape in Cambodia compared to other countries, said Ung Vanna, who compiles crime data for the UN Inter-Agency Project on trafficking.
In Belgium and Malaysia, recent sprees of five or six rape-killings of girls drew allegations of negligence in prevention and investigation. In Belgium, thousands demonstrated against the killings. Malaysia’s rapes grabbed international headlines—as officials debated punishing criminals with a public flogging.
In Cambodia, the killings usually draw small stories in newspapers. In the last three years, the number of rape stories increased slightly in the Khmer-language Rasmei Kampuchea (Light of Cambodia) and Koh Santepheap (Island of Peace) newspapers before the UNIAP study’s funding was cut in September, Ung Vanna said.
Perhaps increasingly publicized violence toward progressively younger children has caused people to report cases more readily, said Katarina Hammaberg, legal adviser to the human rights NGO Adhoc.
“When you have babies being raped, that’s when you start reporting it,” she said, citing the rape of a 14-month-old girl in Pursat province in April.
An Old Story
Mon Chinda’s mother, Chan Sokha, paid attention to newspaper and radio rape reports only in passing—until her daughter became the subject of one of them.
“I never thought it would happen to my daughter,” she said. “I feel angry now, when I hear these cases happen to other children.”
Her daughter’s case is typical of what is reported in Cambodian newspapers.
She is a girl. Most rape victims are. She is a child; about 70 percent of the cases reported to Adhoc have involved children.
She also came from a poor village, a factor in many cases.
Anglong Kong Thmei is a dusty hamlet on a rural grid in Prey Sar commune. Villagers were relocated there in 2002 after a fire blazed through their slum near the Sam Rainsy Party headquarters in Chamkar Mon district’s Tonle Bassac commune.
Like most relocated villagers, Chan Sokha complains of the lack of work and the price of a motorbike ride to town—about $1.50—which usually negates a day’s wages.
Among those in her village, her family’s shack is one of the smallest. There is one bed and only a small table on which to prepare meals.
Mon Chinda’s father left Chan Sokha years ago for another woman. Chan Sokha supported the family, now two sons, 13 and 16, as a construction worker and rice harvester.
According to rights workers, something else makes Mon Chinda’s case typical: The suspect has not been caught.
Police vowed to find the suspect in Mon Chinda’s killing, but weeks later, no one has been found.
“The suspect escaped. However, I will try my best to arrest him because this was a cruel act,” Khea Sokhom, deputy commune police chief said at the time.
But Mon Chinda’s case is atypical in that it was reported to Licadho and police—which rights workers suspect happens in only a fraction of rape cases, according to an Adhoc report.
When rights workers or Minister of Women’s Affairs Mu Sochua get involved, the case is more likely to be solved, Adhoc Director Thun Saray said. Last year, a suspect was arrested in 157 of Adhoc’s 356 cases. Some 231 went to court. Ministry of Interior reports do not include the numbers of reports that end in an arrest.
Chan Sokha said she has been to the police office several times seeking information. But all she knows now is a warrant has been issued for Soy Kimsean, a 26- or 27-year-old neighbor.
“I always pray to Buddha to reach out and arrest the criminal, because I feel pity for my daughter,” she said.
‘Trust No One’
In a recent interview, Mu Sochua urged people to guard their children.
“Our children are facing much more danger now. We cannot be sure they are OK,” she said. “The message we should put out to parents is to trust no one.”
A traditional Khmer proverb describes a woman as a piece of white cloth—once soiled, never cleaned, Mu Sochua said.
“The whole village feels pity,” she said. “It’s not a comforting kind of pity, it’s a demeaning kind. You will always be a member of the community without a voice.”
The Khmer Rouge regime left a legacy of violence in Cambodia, but that doesn’t give Cambodians an excuse to rape and kill each other, she said.
It doesn’t mean government officials can shirk responsibility either, she said, upon return from a recent visit to Kompong Speu province to investigate another rape-killing in which a suspect has not been found.
“Rapists are not just satisfied with sexual assault,” said Mu Sochua, appalled after visiting the family of a 17-year-old girl killed in February. “The victim, from the description, was severely, severely disfigured.”
The family found the girl’s body hidden beneath palm branches in a small dip in a rice field, her jaw and cheekbones were smashed and her clothing was torn until she was almost naked, Mu Sochua said.
Despite their promises, police often do not find suspects in these cases, she said.
“When the Women’s Ministry does interviews, we have a better chance of catching a suspect,” Mu Sochua said.
But Cambodian social mores often deter people from reporting sexual attacks, said Yan Sam, deputy police chief of Kompong Thom province’s Stung Sen district.
