To the man who insists that he is her father, there is no doubt that the filthy, naked woman caught stealing rice from loggers in the jungle like a wild animal is the daughter he gave up as lost 18 years ago.

The woman, found last Saturday in a remote area in Cambodia, has long, matted hair, grunts and screams instead of speaking and has a hunted expression and a fear of people.

But Ksor Lou said that he instantly recognised the daughter he had last seen when she was 8. The girl, Ro Cham H’pnhieng, had been herding buffalo in the jungle when she vanished in 1989. Mr Ksor always believed that she had been killed by wild animals.

When rumours reached his village that a naked woman had been caught by loggers he decided to have a look.

To his astonishment he recognised her from a childhood scar on her arm from a knife cut. The reconciliation was a joyous one for the father, but apparently not for the daughter, who refuses to wear clothes or eat with chopsticks, fights off anyone who approaches, will not wash and has tried to escape back to the jungle.

Because she can apparently speak no language, it is impossible for her to explain who she is or how she has been living.

“It is not easy, but life is waiting ahead for her,” said Mr Ksor, a policeman who belongs to the Jrai ethnic minority group. He is optimistic about the future, and yesterday, six days after her discovery, the woman’s behaviour was said to be improving a little. “When she is hungry, she pats her stomach as a signal,” Mr Ksor said. “If she is not sleeping, she just sits and glances left and right, left and right.”

The discovery was made in the Oyadao district of Rattanakiri province, 200 miles (320km) from the capital, Phnom Penh, in the northeast of Cambodia near the border with Vietnam.

Mr Ksor told the Associated Press news agency: “When I saw her, she was naked and walking in a bending-forward position like a monkey . . . she was bare-bones skinny. She was shaking and picking up grains of rice to eat. Her eyes were red like a tiger’s eyes.”

Mao San, the police chief of Oyadao district, has described the woman as “half-human and half-animal”, saying that she sleeps all day and is awake at night. Local officials believe that she is Mr Ksor’s daughter.

Sketchy reports from the remote area suggest that the woman lived wild and alone for years. But according to another report yesterday she had been with a naked male companion, who was armed with a machete when she was caught. She had marks on her arm from being bound, suggesting that she might have been kidnapped and kept for years as a slave.

The woman was discovered after a woodsman’s food disappeared from his lunchbox. Chea Bunthoeun, a police officer, said: “He decided to stake out the area and then spotted a naked human being, who looked like a jungle person, sneaking in to steal his rice.” The man gathered some friends and managed to catch her.

Police plan to send the woman to a hospital for medical checks and a blood test to establish her parentage, but villagers are convinced that she is Ro Cham H’pnhieng.

Many Cambodians were forced to spend years hiding in the jungle during the genocidal Khmer Rouge regime and the years of civil war after its fall. In 2004 a party of former refugees who had fled into the jungle reappeared after more than two decades. They were clad in bark and leaves and had no idea that the war was over. Twenty-two babies had been born during their wanderings, several of whom had grown into adulthood without meeting any other people.

Cut off from civilisation

In 1970 a girl aged 13 was discovered in a house in California, tied to a potty chair. For ten years she had been locked alone in a room throughout the day. She was unable to talk or walk properly. The girl, Genie, initially made good progress — scoring well on spatial reasoning tests — but she never fully learnt to talk. She lives in a care home

Source: Feralchildren.com

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