Cambodian woman found after 19 years of jungle life

January 18, 2007

A woman who disappeared in the jungles of Cambodia at the age of 8, has been found after having lived as a feral child for 19 years. She is identified as Rochom P'ngieng, who disappeared in 1988, when tending buffalos in a remote part of the jungles of north-eastern Cambodia.

Her parents had given up all hope of finding her since it was so long ago that she disappeared. The father of the girl is convinced that the woman is his daughter based on a distinct scar on her back and facial features. Authorities have asked for a DNA test to confirm the girl's identity. Rochom P'ngieng would be 27 years old.

The woman speaks no comprehensible language and thus it is difficult to confirm what has happened to her. She was discovered when a villager noticed that food had disappeared from a lunchbox he had left nearby his home, so he decided to watch the area, discovering the naked woman when she came again for some rice, according to the chief of police, Mao San in Oyado. "It is as if she's part human and part animal", said Mao San. A group of villagers were called together to catch the woman. The woman has had a hard time adjusting to normal life.

"She is strange. She sleeps in the day and wakes in the night," said Mao San.