A YOUNG man who persuaded a 14-year-old girl to rob her own parents’ home in Takeo province has been charged with rape after the pair were found in Phnom Penh on Sunday.

Keo Thea, director of Phnom Penh’s Municipal Anti-human Trafficking and Juvenile Protection Bureau, said Monday that the suspect would be sent to Phnom Penh Municipal Court for further investigation after confessing to having slept with the girl on two occasions.”

Suspect Suos Virak, 21, persuaded the girl to steal about US$4,000 worth of gold from her parent’s home on Friday, before the couple fled together to Phnom Penh.

After the victim’s parents had notified police about the robbery and that their daughter was missing, authorities in Phnom Penh found the girl at Spark nightclub on Mao Tse-tung Boulevard on Sunday night. When the girl told police about Suos Virak, police arrested the suspect in Daun Penh district’s Phsar Thmey commune.

“We received a complaint from the girl’s parents that they lost four damlungs’ worth of gold. They believed their own daughter stole it. We arrested the man on Sunday night after hearing testimony from the girl, and now she has been sent back home,” Keo Thea told the Post.

The victim has not been charged for the robbery.