OLL LEWIS: The Cambodian Jungle Girl

While I was researching an article for the India expedition blog I came across an interesting 'feral child' case I had not heard of before. On 13th January 2007 in Ratanakiri, North-Eastern Cambodia a villager noticed that rice was disappearing from his lunch box so he set about finding the culprit. The villager was shocked to see a naked young lady coming up to his lunch box and retreating back to the jungle with some rice. He gathered up some of the other villagers and together they captured the girl. A policeman from Oyadao village named Sal Lou recognised the girl as his missing daughter, Rochom P'ngieng, from a scar on her arm and her facial features. Sal Lou had not seen his daughter since she was 8 and she and her younger sister had gone missing while tending water buffalo in 1988 and would be around the same age as the feral person.

Sal Lou took the girl in to his family and at the time of the discovery planned to undertake a DNA test to prove he was the girl's father, a plan he has since abandoned. When she was discovered she only seemed to know 3 words: “father”, “Mother” and bizarrely “stomach-ache.” She would often try to communicate by gesturing, like pointing to her mouth when she was hungry.

The girl has deep scars around her ankles and wrists, indicating that, rather than having lived wild in the jungle for most of her life, she was kept somewhere against her will by persons unknown. Like many supposed feral children hers may be a story of escaping a situation where she was abused and deprived of human contact while growing up rather than actually being raised by animals.

The girl makes frequent attempts to return to the jungle but is often found some time later near her 'parents' house. On the most recent of these escapes in May 2010 she was found in a toilet pit 100m from her adoptive home 11 days later, having accidentally trapped herself there.

Although Sal Lou and his family has made some progress in teaching the girl some more words and skills since she came to live with them he freely admits that they don't have as much time as they would like to be able to teach her and the mental health NGO Psicologos Sin Fronteras have stepped in to help her reintegration into society.