(Photo: The sister of Phal Sophoeun, with her brother, holds up the only picture of the slain 14-year-old. 8 January 2009. By Isabelle Roughol)

By Isabelle Roughol and Neou Vannarin

Svay Sar commune, Pursat Province – Phal Sokhoeun, 27, was careful about the safety of her 14-year-old sister, Phal Sophoeun. She did not send her to the fields or to herd the cows after school, like so many other girls in Krakor district’s Boeng Smuk village. Phal Sophoeun was a quiet, gentle fifth grader, who walked straight home from Koh Kandal Primary School to watch her infant nephew. She never strayed far from the village.

“I was very careful and still it happened,” Phal Sokhoeun said of the rape and murder of her little sister, whom she’d raised for the past 11 years, after their mother died and father abandoned them.

Phal Sophoeun had been missing since Monday afternoon, along with her cousin Nai Vinn, 11, a second grader in the same school. Friends and relatives started searching in the fields, thinking the two might have got lost on their way home. Huot Nai, 37, Nai Vinn’s father, traveled to two neighboring villages in search of the girls.

On Tuesday afternoon, Phal Chantha, 19, Phal Sophoeun’s brother, saw a spot of color on the forested mountain towering over the field where he was standing. He gathered a group of 10 men to investigate. About 5 km into the forest, they found the two girls hanging from the same branch of a tree, about 2 meters from the ground.

The cousins had been raped, beaten up and strangled to death. Both had bled from their vaginas. Nai Vinn had bruises all over her body, both legs were broken and her eyeballs had been poked in. Phal Sophoeun had a broken leg and her neck was broken in so many places that “her head could move in any direction,” Phal Sokhoeun said.

The girls’ bodies were cremated Wednesday. Police suspect more than one perpetrator was involved but have made no arrest.

“It’s difficult to identify the suspects because the house is very far from the police office and it’s isolated from the village. And when we asked the people, they seemed to know nothing about potential suspects,” said Soeun Sopheak, provincial penal police chief.

The investigation is also difficult because police arrived at the isolated village at nighttime Tuesday, more than 24 hours after the crime, he said. Local police will continue investigating the case, he added.

On the way to the girls’ neighboring homes, roads of red earth get smaller and smaller until only a narrow footpath through yards and fields leads to three houses. Here, each home has lost a daughter.

Three years ago, the Phans’ neighbor, Thon Than, 20, left one morning carrying fertilizer to the family farm. She was later found raped, beaten up and strangled to death. No arrest was ever made.

“I believe in the law. If [police] could not find out, I don’t have any idea what to do,” said Long Khun, 60, proudly displaying a framed portrait of Thon Than, the niece she raised after her parents’ death.

Though Thon Than was not found hung up, the cases are cruel and similar enough to send a chill through Svay Sar commune. Many parents interviewed, including in the commune town 10 km away, said they were afraid for their children and would not let them get away from the house or school.

In Boeng Smuk village, Un Tae, 50, won’t let his twin daughters, 20, go to the fields or tend the cows anymore. He and his three sons have taken on the women’s jobs so they can stay close to home.

“I might stay at home forever,” said Tay Savuth, one of the twins, who added she was terrified.

The village of 278 families is usually peaceful, without any gangs, and everyone here is a friend or a relative, Phal Sokhoeun said. She couldn’t think of anyone who could have raped and murdered the girls.

But while he doesn’t have any suspect, the village chief, Kin Ngas, 62, is looking at his constituents differently now.

“The crab that cuts the rice in the rice field is the crab in the rice field,” he said, suggesting the killers were locals.

He’s advising that children stay as close to home as possible and that women travel in groups of at least three and let their families know where they are going.

Contacted Thursday, Minister of Women’s Affairs Ing Kantha Phavi said she wouldn’t speak over the phone to a journalist she doesn’t know.

“We have a policy [to prevent violence against women]. We’ve implemented it for five years already,” she said before hanging up.

At press time, Ellen Minotti of Social Services of Cambodia, had not returned a call for comment. The Cambodian Women’s Crisis Center and Cambodian Social Development could not be reached for comment.

(Photo: The one-room police station for Svay Sar commune. 8 January 2009. By Isabelle Roughol)

By Isabelle Roughol and Neou Vannarin

The Cambodia Daily

Police investigating the rapes and murders of two girls in Pursat province last week said they lack the resources to collect essential evidence and have had little technical training in such matters.

The bodies were superficially examined before cremation and no physical samples were taken, giving police little to go on in their investigation, which has no leads and no suspects, they said.

“We could only just examine the dead bodies, and we did not take any DNA from the bodies because we do not have high technology,” Pursat Provincial Police Chief Sarun Chanthy said. “And we did not take fingerprints from the victims’ bodies because of a shortage of equipment, and the bodies were swollen,” he said.

Nai Vinn, 11, and Phal Sophoeun, 14, were found dead and hanging from a tree Jan 6 about 5 km from their home in Krakor district’s Boeng Smuk village. They had been missing a day and were raped and beaten severely enough to have bones broken.

When villagers found the bodies they alerted the commune police, who are housed in a one-room wooden house in Svay Sar commune town, several kilometers away from the village.

District and commune police, who arrived at the village that afternoon, could only guard the crime scene and wait for specialists from the provincial capital, said Ben Vanna, Krakor district police chief.

“Only the technical and scientific police bureau at the provincial police has specialists [to examine the bodies of victims.] We have received some training, but it was only on paper,” he said by telephone Tuesday.

The families were allowed to take the bodies home the day they were found but not to cremate them, Ben Vanna said previously.

Provincial police examined the bodies on the following morning, Jan 7, and by the afternoon they had been cremated. No DNA sample was taken, and no autopsy performed.

“We could only take some photos and some evidence around the crime scene,” Sarun Chanthy said.

Two instructors from the scientific and technical police department of the National Police in Phnom Penh, who were training in Pursat police, are assisting in the investigation, Sarun Chanthy said, adding he was not planning to request more help from Phnom Penh.

Police, particularly in rural areas, often lack the skills, resources or willingness to investigate rape cases, said Seila Samleang, country director of child protection organization Action Pour Les Enfants.

“Normally they’re just waiting at the office for evidence to come in,” Seila Samleang said.

“The victims have to do their best to [push the investigation forward]; if not the police will just drop out of the case. So it depends on how serious the victim is in taking the case forward for justice,” he said in an interview Tuesday.

Helen Sworn, director of Chab Dai Coalition, which runs shelters for abused children, confirmed that observation.

“The only way that we’ve seen successful cases is we literally follow it every step of the way,” she said.

Families who do not have the support of an organization have a harder time getting their case to the courts, and often prefer financial compensation instead, she said.

The National Police’s new spokesman Kieth Chantharith acknowledged on Tuesday that police have limited resources to investigate such serious crimes.

“We could not compare our technology to developed countries,” he said. “We do investigate within our capabilities.”

“We have the will to find the perpetrators, and we feel pity for [the victims of] the rape case. The police always conduct the investigation in these cases even if there is no complaint from the victim’s family,” he said.

Kieth Chantharith declined to comment on progress in the Pursat double rape murder investigation.

Ron Dunne, director of investigations at the International Justice Mission, and Steve Morrish, executive director of Southeast Asia Investigations into Social and Humanitarian Activities, were both more sympathetic concerning the abilities of law enforcement officers.

Child rapes seem more prominent in the news and statistics because police are doing a better job at investigating them, Dunne said.

And although rural police stations still have limited resources, police have made great improvements in training personnel and cooperating with NGOs, Morrish said.

“They’re doing their best,” he said.

“It’s a lot better than four years ago, that’s for sure,” he said, referring to the time when he started SISHA.

But, for Mu Sochua, SRP lawmaker and former minister of women’s affairs, the difficulties in investigating and prosecuting child rape-murder cases go to the heart of Cambodia’s longstanding culture of impunity.

“The top police, the top [officials at the] Ministry of Interior, the government [don't give] enough value to our children. It cannot be case closed. Every murder, every rape is case closed,” she said.

“It’s not just the case of the two girls [in Pursat],” Mu Sochua added.