AN 18-year-old ethnic Tampuon woman from Ratanakkiri province returned home last week after neighbours allegedly took her to the capital for job training without her family’s permission.

However, the woman, Leith Dauth, said yesterday that she had volunteered to go to Phnom Penh, and only decided to return to Ratanakkiri after learning that her parents disapproved of her plan to go work in Malaysia.

In Phnom Penh, she said she “stayed in a house where I learned how to cook and speak English.... No one there used violence against me or tried to rape me.

Mour Plai, the woman’s mother, filed a complaint to Ratanakkiri provincial court on July 16, accusing Ta Keng, 50, and his daughter, Keng Bun, 18, of trafficking Leith Dauth to Phnom Penh in order to enroll her in a labour-training programme in Russey Keo district run by Champa Manpower Group.

Last month, the employment firm was the target of a raid in which officials discovered 232 women and girls living in squalid conditions.

Mour Plai, the woman’s mother, confirmed that her daughter had returned home, but said she would need to “discuss the situation” with the young woman before deciding whether to drop the legal complaint.